Las Vegas Criminal Defense Blog

The former bailiff for former Clark County District Court Judge Elizabeth Halverson has pleaded guilty to violating lewdness with a minor law in Nevada. He was arrested back in February after allegedly assaulting a young teenage girl sexually. He will be sentenced on June 2 and is currently being held at the Clark County Detention Center on $170,000 bail.

According to the police report, the former bailiff sexually abused the girl while his mom and ex-fiancee talked with the victim’s mother outside of her house. The responding officer reported that the victim’s underwear appeared bloodstained. She reportedly told the police that he assaulted her.

Lewdness with a minor law in Nevada makes it a crime to commit any lewd or lascivious act upon a child under fourteen with the intent of receiving or giving sexual gratification. The touching does not have to be on a sex organ as long as it’s committed with sexual intent. The standard sentence for violating lewdness with a minor law in Nevada is life in prison.

Read more about this story at http://www.lvrj.com/news/former-bailiff-enters-guilty-plea-89558002.html.

The Jaycee Lee Dugard kidnapping case has prompted parole officers in Nevada to search the backyards of the sex offenders under their supervision. In addition, they’re also checking satellite images of their residences on Google Earth. In an effort to crack down on sex crimes in Nevada, Governor Jim Gibbons said he wants to make sure "that our officers are checking things they may have bypassed in the past."

According to a legislative audit released last year, the Nevada Division of Parole and Probation (http://dps.nv.gov/npp/index.shtml) isn’t always meeting their standards: Thirty-one percent of the time, parole officers neglected to meet their twice-monthly requirement to visit sex offenders. And nearly fifty percent of the time, parole officers didn’t take the required DNA samples from the sex offenders. Since, then, however, these problems have reportedly been addressed.

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