Prosecutors Will Seek Death Penalty in Casino Slaying

Nevada prosecutors decided Thursday they will seek the death penalty for Jeremy Strohmeyer, the Long Beach teenager accused of killing a 7-year-old Los Angeles girl in a casino restroom.

Clark County Dist. Atty. Stewart Bell said a committee of senior prosecutors reviewed the allegations against Strohmeyer and determined that “we can look a jury in the eye and say, ‘This is an appropriate death penalty case.’ ”

Strohmeyer, 18, is accused of following Sherrice Iverson into the bathroom of the Primadonna Resort, sexually assaulting her and then strangling her. Detectives have said Strohmeyer confessed to snapping the girl’s neck after sitting on her until her breathing became labored.

A grand jury last week indicted Strohmeyer on charges of murder, kidnapping and sexual assault. He is scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 25.

Strohmeyer’s attorney, Richard Wright, could not be reached for comment.

If Strohmeyer pleads not guilty, the trial will proceed in two phases.

First, jurors will consider the felony charges against him.

If they convict Strohmeyer, the trial will move on to a penalty phase. Jurors will then be asked to weigh three punishment options: death, and life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

(In California, jurors in capital cases do not have the option of urging parole.)

Nevada jurors can recommend the death penalty only if they find beyond a reasonable doubt that the murder was committed along with at least one “aggravating circumstance,” such as sexual assault, kidnapping or involving a victim under 14. Further, they must find that the aggravating circumstances outweigh any possible mitigating factors, such as a troubled childhood or a clean prior record.

Even if they determine that aggravating circumstances outweigh mitigating factors, jurors are not obligated to recommend the death penalty. Before they are seated on the panel, in fact, they will be questioned intensively “to make sure they can consider all three [punishment] options equally,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Peggy Leen, who is prosecuting the case.

If Strohmeyer pleads guilty, there will be no jury trial. Instead, a panel of three judges will determine his punishment.

While Bell declined to talk about the specifics of the Strohmeyer case, he emphasized that prosecutors “don’t seek the death penalty to use as a bargaining chip with the defendant. We want to be honest with the defendant, honest with the jurors and honest with the courts.”

The teenager’s defense lawyers have contended that the police obtained incriminating statements from Strohmeyer illegally, by denying him legal counsel during a long interrogation and by grilling him while his stomach was being pumped after an apparent suicide attempt.

Strohmeyer told detectives he followed Sherrice into the women’s bathroom before dawn on May 25 because he was angry that she had thrown a “Caution, Wet Floor” sign at him while they were playing hide-and-seek, according to a police affidavit.

The girl had been roaming the video arcade unsupervised while her father gambled in the casino.

According to a detective’s affidavit, Strohmeyer said he snapped the girl’s neck “like he has seen on TV” because he thought she was already brain-dead from suffocation and he “didn’t want her to suffer.”