Polk
Polk v. Sandoval
Opinion
Opinion
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND
On the night of December 14, 1998, Levenral Demarlo Polk drove around Las Vegas in a car borrowed from his girl- friend, Leslie Harris. Polk’s longtime friend, Walter (“Wattie” or “Y.T.”) Hodges, was a passenger in the car. Near the inter- section of Owens Avenue and Nellis Boulevard, witnesses heard several gunshots and saw Hodges fall out of a car that looked like Harris’s and into the street in front of a bus stop as the car drove away.
On March 16, 1999, the State of Nevada charged Polk in the Clark County District Court with the first-degree murder of Hodges with use of a deadly weapon and discharging a firearm out of a motor vehicle. Nevada Revised Statutes § 200.010 defined murder as “the unlawful killing of a human being, with malice aforethought, either express or implied.” Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.010 (1999). Murder of the first degree is murder “[p]erpetrated by means of poison, lying in wait or torture, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and pre- meditated killing.” Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.030(1)(a) (1999) (emphasis added). Murder of the second degree is “all other kinds of murder.” Nev. Rev. Stat. § 200.030(2) (1999).