Opinion
No. 65068
07-22-2014
ANTHONY DAVID KARNES, Appellant, v. THE STATE OF NEVADA, Respondent.
An unpublished order shall not be regarded as precedent and shall not be cited as legal authority. SCR 123.
ORDER OF AFFIRMANCE
This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction, pursuant to a guilty plea, of trafficking in a controlled substance. Second Judicial District Court, Washoe County; Jerome Polaha, Judge.
Appellant Anthony David Karnes contends that the district court abused its discretion by ordering his sentence in this case to run consecutively with a sentence imposed in another case without articulating the rationale for doing so.
We afford the district court wide discretion when imposing sentence, see Houk v. State, 103 Nev. 659, 664, 747 P.2d 1376, 1379 (1987), and will refrain from interfering with the sentence imposed "[s]o long as the record does not demonstrate prejudice resulting from consideration of information or accusations founded on facts supported only by impalpable or highly suspect evidence." Silks v. State, 92 Nev. 91, 94, 545 P.2d 1159, 1161 (1976). As Karnes acknowledges, it is also within the district court's discretion to impose consecutive sentences, see NRS 176.035(1) [effective through June 30, 2014]; Warden v. Peters, 83 Nev. 298, 303, 429 P.2d 549, 552 (1967), and judges are not required to articulate the basis for imposing a consecutive sentence. Karnes's term of 40 to 120 months is within the parameters provided by the relevant statute, see NRS 453.3385(2), and we are not convinced that the district court abused its discretion in ordering the sentence to run consecutively with his sentence in another case considering the nature of the offenses in each case and his prior criminal history. We decline Karnes's request to adopt a rule requiring the district court to impose concurrent sentences when sentencing a defendant on separate crimes during the same sentencing hearing, or alternatively, a rule requiring the court to articulate the rationale for imposing a consecutive sentence, see Campbell v. Eighth Judicial Dist. Court, 114 Nev. 410, 414, 957 P.2d 1141, 1143 (1998). Therefore, we
ORDER the judgment of conviction AFFIRMED.
__________, J.
Pickering
__________, J.
Parraguirre
__________, J.
Saitta
cc: Hon. Jerome Polaha, District Judge
David Kalo Neidert
Attorney General/Carson City
Washoe County District Attorney
Washoe District Court Clerk