## Facts

- Michael Domingues was sixteen when he entered a woman’s home and killed her and her four-year-old son.
- A jury convicted him of burglary, robbery with use of a deadly weapon, first-degree murder, and first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon.
- At age seventeen, he received two death sentences for the murder convictions under a Nevada statute permitting capital punishment for offenders who were at least sixteen at the time of the offense.
- His convictions and death sentences were affirmed on direct appeal.
- He later moved to correct an illegal sentence, arguing that executing offenders for crimes committed under age eighteen violates the ICCPR and customary international law.
- The district court denied the motion, concluding the sentences were not facially illegal and were not correctable through the procedural vehicle invoked.

## Issues

1. Whether Nevada’s statute authorizing the death penalty for offenders who were at least sixteen at the time of the capital offense is superseded by the ICCPR’s bar on imposing the death penalty for crimes committed by persons under eighteen.
2. Whether the ICCPR is enforceable in Nevada courts absent implementing legislation, given the United States’ non-self-executing declaration.
3. Whether customary international law independently prohibits executing offenders for crimes committed under eighteen, rendering the sentences “illegal” under Nevada procedure.

## Decision

- The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the order denying the motion to correct an illegal sentence.
- The ICCPR did not supersede Nevada law because the United States ratified the treaty with an express reservation preserving the right to impose capital punishment for crimes committed by persons under eighteen (subject to constitutional constraints).
- The ICCPR provisions invoked were not self-executing and therefore did not create enforceable domestic rights absent implementing legislation.
- The court rejected the claim that customary international law clearly and obligatorily prohibited juvenile executions at the relevant time.
- Because the death sentences were authorized by the controlling Nevada sentencing statute, they were not “illegal” for purposes of a motion to correct an illegal sentence.

## Legal Principles

- A motion to correct an illegal sentence is limited to sentences that are facially illegal or contrary to the controlling sentencing statute; it is not a vehicle to relitigate broader legal claims when the sentence falls within statutory limits.
- A treaty provision does not displace state law where the United States ratified the treaty with an explicit reservation permitting the challenged practice.
- A non-self-executing treaty does not create directly enforceable rights in domestic courts without implementing legislation.
- Customary international law requires general and consistent state practice accepted as legally obligatory; materially divergent practice undermines claims of a binding customary prohibition.

## Conclusion

Nevada’s death sentences for a defendant who committed capital murder at age sixteen were not illegal under state law because the ICCPR, as ratified by the United States, did not prohibit juvenile executions domestically, the treaty was non-self-executing without implementing legislation, and no clearly binding customary international law rule barred the punishment at the time.


Domingues v. State, 114 Nev. 783, 961 P.2d 1279 (Nev. 1998)