By Matt Ward
A first-degree murder suspect who has repeatedly failed to convince District Court judges to release him on bail has appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court for help.
Lawyers for Daniel Robbins, charged in the shooting death of his daughter’s boyfriend in August 2011, filed a writ of habeas corpus with the state’s high court May 15.
In bold type, the writ spells out for the justices the defendant’s complaint, that he has “an absolute right to bail because even though he is charged with first degree murder, death is not an available punishment for the crime.”
Robbins and his lawyers attempted to sway Judge Robert Lane during an April hearing to grant bail — the defendant’s third attempt — but the judge, while setting bail on lesser felony charges refused to grant the motion on the murder charge.
Robbins’ lawyers argue that Lane violated their client’s constitutional rights and committed a legal error by not allowing bail. According to their Supreme Court pleading, the judge confused Nevada’s rule that defendants accused of “capital” murder are to be denied bail.
“First Degree Murder sic remains bailable as long as no aggravating circumstances have been brought forth. This belief by Judge Lane that Petitioner has no right to bail simply because he is charged with first degree murder in sic an incorrect statement of the law . . . Petitioner was, and is ready sic to post reasonable bail, but has been precluded from the opportunity to do so for 9 months in his case by erroneous actions of the court,” the filing states.
Robbins was denied bail twice by Judge Kimberly Wanker, who presided over earlier hearings. She recused herself from the case after Robbins’ attorneys discovered that after one such hearing earlier this year, the court’s recording system caught the judge in private conversation with staff members making remarks disparaging Robbins.
Robbins was jailed after allegedly shooting 21-year-old Chris Mundy and a 14-year-old passenger in Mundy’s car. A dispute at Robbins’ Benson Circle home between his two daughters turned into a brawl that had Nye County Sheriff’s deputies hauling one daughter, Mundy’s girlfriend Jennifer Robbins, then 19, off to jail.
From jail, Jennifer reportedly asked Mundy to go to her parents’ house to retrieve a vehicle.
“I didn’t know what was going on at that point. I was still locked up and I told Chris to go and get my stuff, to get my car,” she told the Pahrump Valley Times at the time. “I told him not to say anything to them. If they smacked him, just to walk away and if they called police, just let the cops know that I gave you permission to take my car, my name is on the title.”
Mundy and his girlfriend’s parents exchanged violent, curse-laden messages via Facebook leading up to Mundy showing up at the Robbins home at about 1: 30 a.m. on Aug. 18 of last year. Headlights beaming into the home, Daniel Robbins’ wife first confronted Mundy, then her husband, gun in hand, fired a warning shot into the front bumper of Mundy’s white Acura. When Mundy refused to leave, Daniel Robbins allegedly walked to the driver side window and shot Mundy point blank in neck, the bullet passing through the young man’s body and hitting the 14-year-old boy beside him.
Robbins was charged with the murder, battery on the juvenile and assault charges.
In the April hearing before Lane, two court dates were scheduled for possible trials — nine days were set aside to try the case — one in November and the other in April 2013.
In a morbid sidenote to this story, the car Mundy was killed in was taken to a temporary Nye County Sheriff’s impound yard after the shooting for processing as evidence in the case. When the sheriff’s new impound lot was opened several months ago, however, a high-ranking sheriff’s official ordered that all the vehicles being held be released or sold. Mundy’s car, bullet holes still visible, was sold by a local auto tow yard and several sources have reported seeing it driving around town.
Sources at the sheriff’s office have confirmed that the car is no longer in police custody.
In a less morbid sidenote, the Robbins family and their supporters recently sent the PVT a letter asking the newspaper to print a retraction of its April 13 story regarding the hearing before Lane.
The letter lodges several complaints about the accuracy of the story that appeared in the paper. A review of the transcript of the hearing, a recording of the hearing made by the newspaper and subsequent interviews with sources show zero cause for retracting the story.
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- Daniel Robbins
Well let’s see everytime these people try to get” BAIL” and go to court it does cost us use everyone’s tax paying dollars, no one said it pays Mr.Robbins” Bail”
Yes some one did say it, try reading the whole thread and keep up.
agramma says:
May 25, 2012 at 10:02 am
This guy is such a wacko. So let’s just let all of our taxes go to pay for bail for all accused of crimes.
corruptedlaw stated “excuse me Joe thomas, but those are 2 different statutes. AB321 is what I quoted but regardless Mr Robbins is protected under both.”
You obviously do not understand what “AB” stands for or what the difference between an Assembly Bill (AB) and a statue is.
Assembly and Senate Bills (AB and SB) are submitted as proposals to become statutes.
Mr. Robbins is not protected under both as you claim. A little research would show you where NRS 200.120 originated from.
I’ve met Mr Robbins and know his family, and I have to agree that he belongs in jail to pay for his crime. It is wrong to take another person’s life
RIGHT, YOU WERE NOT THERE AND DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED,so why are u even commenting then,Really?Mr.Robbins was not in a state of being threatened he was inside his house, behind huge walls and a door.the young adult/kid again were a parked car. And yes The police zare HERE TO PROTECT US, where do u think some of our taxes Go For.
Try to respond to who you are talking with, that’s number one. Second, not being there does not change the fact I do know the law, and 3rd, no the police are NOT here to protect us, that fact was ruled on in 2009 by the US SC, there job is only to solve the crime after the fact, they also ruled it’s the job of citerson to protect themselves ad-hock until police show up.
Don’t look to Constitution for help. “In its landmark decision of DeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services,” Stevens writes, “the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Constitution does not impose a duty on the state and local governments to protect the citizens from criminal harm.”
All in all, as Stevens says, you’d be much better off owning a gun and learning how to use it. Even in those cases where you could successfully sue, this victory comes only after years (sometimes more than a decade) of wrestling with the justice system and only after you’ve been gravely injured or your loved one has been snuffed.
http://www.disinfo.com/2010/03/the-police-arent-legally-obligated-to-protect-you/
Because the police have no general duty to protect individuals, judicial remedies are not available for their failure to protect. In other words, if someone is injured because they expected but did not receive police protection, they cannot recover damages by suing (except in very special cases, explained below). Despite a long history of such failed attempts, however, many, people persist in believing the police are obligated to protect them, attempt to recover when no protection was forthcoming, and are emotionally demoralized when the recovery fails. Legal annals abound with such cases.
Warren v. District of Columbia is one of the leading cases of this type. Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate’s screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: “For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers.”
The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.’s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.” [4] There are many similar cases with results to the same effect. [5]
In the Warren case the injured parties sued the District of Columbia under its own laws for failing to protect them. Most often such cases are brought in state (or, in the case of Warren, D.C.) courts for violation of state statutes, because federal law pertaining to these matters is even more onerous. But when someone does sue under federal law, it is nearly always for violation of 42 U.S.C. 1983 (often inaccurately referred to as “the civil rights act”). Section 1983 claims are brought against government officials for allegedly violating the injured parties’ federal statutory or Constitutional rights.
http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html
BTW, the above was the SC case I was referring to. So please, find out the facts instead of talking out of your ass. There are a ton of other such cases out there proving again and again, the cops are NOT legally responsible to protect you even if you got a court order for such protection.
Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: June 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, June 27 – The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.
The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman’s pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html?_r=1
I can go on and on case after case, but I am sure even you now can grasp the fact it’s up to you to protect yourself, not the local law enforcement.
Mike, I appreciate your adding some insights and perspective on this subject. You are an oasis of knowledge in a desert of second-guessing and hyperbole. Thank you.
To New York Mike,
This is not SC, Washington, or columbia This is Pahrump and no one cares about the cases in other States. Facts are Facts and Mr. Robbins shot someone in a car who appears not to have gottened out of it. In other words if theyt were not coming into the home than the Robbins ahould have stayed in there home and CALLED 911,911,911, THIS IS WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE CORRECT APPROACH. Then maybe no one would be going through this issuse.
But this is the US, Pahrump is in the US. And as such, rulings by the US SC affect Pahrump, as every town, city, and state in this country. You just wish to remain ignorant, and not deal with the facts. Who am I to stop you from your view that ignorant is bliss.
Well Mike i don’t know about dealing with the facts but you sure need to learn the facts and the law.In a lot of states if someone brakes into your home and they are unarmed and you shot them you go to jail for murder.I know because i have lived in a lot of those states.And as far as the police i have alot of close friends that are police and H/P and the frist thing they learn and they are told is that there job is to serve and protect.so the only one that i see in this case that is ignorant is the one sitting in jail for murder.No matter how you look at it when you shoot someone unarmed that is no threat to you as was in this casethen that is murder by the frist degree.Now if he would had got out of the car and had a gun or a deadly weapon on him then but all right mr robbin would of had the right to shoot but this was not the case.And also everyone who has any brains what so ever know when you fire a warning shot you shoot in the air not at the car or at a person that is not a warning shot that is attempted murder in it’s self.So i feel as i am sure that 95% of this community feels the same way that he is right where he belongs and there he will stay.
It’s hard to take your comment seriously when you talk about someone braking into a house. Please re-read what Mike said.
Hang in there. You are appreciated. The law is not “what people hope it is” or “believe it should be.”