Opinion
No. 65166
07-22-2014
An unpublisled 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 attempted theft. Fifth Judicial District Court, Nye County; Robert W. Lane, Judge.
Appellant claims that his sentence of 19 to 48 months is disproportionate to the offense of attempted theft and constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. We disagree.
Regardless of its severity, a sentence that is within the statutory limits is not "'cruel and unusual punishment unless the statute fixing punishment is unconstitutional or the sentence is so unreasonably disproportionate to the offense as to shock the conscience.'" Blume v. State, 112 Nev. 472, 475, 915 P.2d 282, 284 (1996) (quoting Culverson v. State, 95 Nev. 433, 435, 596 P.2d 220, 221-22 (1979)); see also Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 1000-01 (1991) (plurality opinion) (explaining that the Eighth Amendment does not require strict proportionality between crime and sentence; it forbids only an extreme sentence that is grossly disproportionate to the crime). The sentence imposed is within the parameters provided by the relevant statutes, see NRS 193.330(1)(a)(4); NRS 205.0835(3), and appellant does not allege that those statutes are unconstitutional. We note that appellant has several prior convictions for fraud related offenses and we are not convinced that the sentence imposed is so grossly disproportionate to the crime as to constitute cruel and unusual punishment. Accordingly, we
ORDER the judgment of conviction AFFIRMED.
__________, J.
Pickering
__________, J.
Parraguirre
__________, J.
Saitta
cc: Hon. Robert W. Lane, District Judge
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