The mugshots of Nye County suspects facing criminal charges will no longer accompany news articles detailing their alleged crimes in the Pahrump Valley Times and Tonopah Times-Bonanza publications as of this month.
Court case cited
As stated from the Nye County Sheriff’s Office social media page, the action came as a result of a Sept. 4, 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling citing the case of Brian Houston v. Maricopa County.
In that case, the court ruled that publishing pre-trial booking photos is unconstitutional.
The circuit court later reversed the district court’s dismissal of Houston’s “due process” claim, stating that he sufficiently alleged that the mugshot post “caused him actionable harm and the county’s transparency did not rationally relate to the punitive nature of the mugshot post.”
Wait and see
“While this ruling goes through the appeals process, we will no longer publish booking photos in the “Confined/Arrests” section of our app and website,” the sheriff’s office post stated.
Earlier this summer, Nye County District Attorney Brian Kunzi threatened to “go to war,” against the Pahrump Valley Times over releasing arrest reports and mugshots to area media outlets, citing similar reasoning.
Never mind
However, following conversations with Pahrump Valley Times’ legal counsel, Kunzi unconditionally surrendered and reversed his decision, thus the text portion of arrest reports continue, sans booking photos, following an in-depth article authored by Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Katelyn Newberg.
It should also be noted that pre-trial images of arrested suspects routinely appeared on nationally televised programs such as “On Patrol Live,” “Live PD,” and “U.S. Cops.”
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com, or on X, formerly Twitter: @pvtimes