This is the second installment in a series investigating issues within the Carson City and Nevada Justice Systems, including plea deals, bail, victims’ rights and more.
If you haven’t read the first installment in the series, you may want to check it out now before continuing:
The problem with bail
Yesterday, this series started by discussing plea deals – and how surprised community members polled were to discover that over 99% of Carson City felony cases did not make it to trial in 2023, with some charges being downgraded or dismissed to secure a guilty plea.
Many may also be surprised to find that the way bail is structured in Nevada allows for a two-track system – one for those who can pay, and one for those who cannot.
It’s more than the difference of sleeping in your own bed rather than a jail cot: those who bail out immediately are able to avoid a bail hearing where a judge can impose stricter conditions on defendants while they are out on bail awaiting their hearings.
A bail hearing is scheduled for each defendant within 48 hours of their arrest. During this hearing, the Court considers whether to keep them in custody if they are a risk, or release them under specific conditions such as GPS monitoring, having no contact with victims, sobriety and more.
Prosecutors can request specific conditions, or an increase in bail, and their victim can petition the Court to keep the defendant in custody or impose additional conditions.
But if a defendant is able to pay their bill quickly, they can forego the bail hearing altogether, and, as one recent case proved, arraignment hearings can sometimes be held months after initial arrests.
This loophole was glaring in the case of attorney Adam Lawson Woodrum, who was arrested on a felony charge of molesting a child. He posted bail six hours after arrest, which meant Carson City Jail staff issued his release conditions — not the Court.
Any time someone is arrested for a crime that involves a victim, their conditions should include having no contact with them. However, an administrative error during his release meant this box was left unchecked.
According to an attorney with knowledge of the case, after posting bail, Woodrum began sending calendar push notifications to the victim’s family. The next day, a temporary protective order was granted, ordering him to have no contact with the victim or their family.
Carson City Court Administrator Max Cortes later stated that the release conditions form failing to order Woodrum to have no contact with the victim was an oversight, and was rectified the next day when he reported to the Department of Alternative Sentencing (DAS).
While this oversight was resolved the next day, other conditions could not be imposed on Woodrum until his first pretrial hearing — occurring six weeks after his release.
During those six weeks, Woodrum roamed in and out of the state without monitoring, other than having to inform DAS if he planned to leave the area.
However, between February 3 and 28, there was no contact at all between Woodrum and DAS after stating he was going to Arizona to visit family.
During his first court appearance in March, prosecutors were finally able to ask for bail to be increased to $100,000, GPS monitoring, DAS supervision including search and seizure without warrant, and no drugs, alcohol, or weapons.
The Court denied the request to increase bail, but approved DAS supervision with the proposed conditions, and ordered that when Woodrum is within Northern Nevada, he must be on GPS monitoring.
While these issues surrounding bail may seem incredible, they are standards of the justice system — and have been debated for decades by judges, advocates, and lawmakers alike.
Those who are high risk but have money can get out and re-offend; those without money are ‘trapped’ because they can’t bail out even though they are low risk.
In the strangulation case of Arnold “Franky” Flores-Estrada, which we profiled yesterday, the same loophole allowed a man who threatened to kill his then-girlfriend Lindsey to be released before she or prosecutors could petition for him to remain in jail or seek additional conditions.
After Lindsey made her report, Flores-Estrada was deemed to be too high risk to interview prior to arrest due to his homicidal and suicidal threats, and deputies instead waited until a warrant could be obtained.
Despite the violent nature of the crime, and his homicidal and suicidal statements, Flores-Estrada was deemed to be “low risk,” and bail was set at $10,000, which he posted the same day.
Unlike the Woodrum case, his release conditions included no contact with Lindsey and ordered compliance with her protective order.
But because Flores-Estrada could skip his bail hearing, neither Lindsey nor prosecutors could argue that his documented murder-suicide threats, EPO violations reports, and background of violence justified detention or additional conditions like GPS monitoring.
Under Marsy’s Law, victims must be informed of, and given the opportunity to speak at, any case proceedings.
However, Lindsey said the first time she was able to speak on the strangulation case was during his sentencing hearing, after he’d already allegedly violated her protection order, threatened her friends, filed multiple TPO requests against her, and had his case downgraded to a misdemeanor charge, according to court documents.
Allowing suspects of domestic violence to post bail without judicial review places victims in danger — something that has not gone unnoticed by lawmakers and advocates.
Bill requiring no bail for domestic violence suspects may be dead in the water
During this year’s legislative session, Senate Bill 14 (SB14) was introduced that rewrites Nevada’s bail statutes for domestic violence cases.
However, after being read for the first time to committee on February 3, 2025, it has failed to be scheduled for its first hearing. If it does not progress through the legislature, the “loophole” its proponents cite will continue to exist.
Currently, if an individual is arrested for a felony while on a suspended sentence, they are not entitled to bail. Under SB 14, this exception would be extended to include a battery that constitutes domestic violence.
It also allows law enforcement officers to arrest an individual they believe violated conditions of their release relating to a no-contact order instead of waiting for a warrant to be issued.
If something like SB 14 was law prior to Lindsey’s ordeal, when she reported the violations against her protective order, responding deputies could have taken Flores-Estrada into custody instead of forwarding them to the DA’s office.
Prosecutor Leslie Butori said some of the reported incidents didn’t constitute violations by law, such as Flores-Estrada’s penchant for circling the victim’s house at all hours of the day and night which were reported multiple times to law enforcement, reports show.
However, others did constitute a violation, including one incident cited by Butori that occurred in September 2024 in a parking lot where Flores-Estrada did not deviate his path while walking past Lindsey.
Butori said Lindsey had alleged five separate violations, three of which she reported to the Sheriff’s Office first and were then forwarded to the DA’s office.
“Of the three that she reported, I reviewed all of them and ultimately combined a bunch of them into one, and had him plead to that violation,” Butori said.
But because he admitted to the violation as part of the plea agreement, it existed in a limbo between pretrial (bail) conditions and sentencing conditions. If prosecuted prior to the plea deal, his bail could have been revoked while answering to that misdemeanor charge.
When asked why she waited to prosecute these violations, Butori said, “I had police reports that I was holding onto to determine, do I file them all together separately? Because he was potentially contemplating entering a resolution. I wanted him to resolve both things. And part of that resolution is he needs to admit the violations as well.”
She said that because the felony would trump the misdemeanor violations, “there [was] no real point at that time to file or deal with [the violations] because nothing [was] going to happen with them until we actually [did] something with the felony charge. So when we decided that we were going to potentially resolve, that’s when those charges were filed, and all filed together, so we could resolve everything at once.”
Lindsey said that she feels she did everything she was supposed to. She was told by deputies, prosecutors and advocates to report any time she felt unsafe or believed a violation had occurred.
However, she said the fact that they chose not to prosecute until the plea deal has led her to ask, “What was the point in reporting anything at all?”
“I did report and they did nothing, even though the EPO has a clear order to act,” Lindsey said. “They effectively let an unhinged woman beater fall through the cracks, even though the victim was incredibly vocal. Letting him slip out of the felony even though there is recorded proof has probably made him feel untouchable, which is probably why he continues to circle my area.”
According to Lindsey, Flores-Estrada possesses multiple guns, proof of which she provided to law enforcement through text messages and photos as noted in police reports. She said she asked multiple times for his home to be searched and any guns confiscated to comply with her protective order.
Who is responsible for investigating this allegation was never made clear to her, and as far as Lindsey knows, his home was never searched for any weapons while out on bail.
District Attorney Garrit Pruyt said whether or not an investigation occurred is unknown, as only violations are forwarded to them. In addition, he said they have no authority to tell law enforcement to investigate these claims.
Instead, Lindsey was told to report the gun violations to the Sheriff’s Office, she said. But the Sheriff’s Office said they couldn’t do anything without a warrant, and she said she was never told to report the violations to DAS.
As part of Flores-Estrada’s risk assessment, his release conditions also did not specify he should not have weapons (though the EPO did), despite written and recorded threats to shoot Lindsey and himself if she reported the attack and he was released.
This is just one issue with how risk assessments are made in Nevada using a tool known as the NPRA.
The Nevada Pretrial Risk Assessment
The Nevada Pretrial Risk Assessment (NPRA) is meant to indicate a defendant’s risk score if released — both as a flight risk and as a general risk to the community.
This could be influenced by the type of charge the person is facing – someone accused of murder, for example, is far more likely to abscond than someone facing a shoplifting charge.
But their “score” includes other considerations: Criminal history, failures to appear, employment and residential status, addiction, and contactability all factor in.
Override mechanisms are in place for the Court if they believe scores do not match reality based on mental health, disability, gang affiliation, severity of prior offenses, or other contextual factors.
In Flores-Estrada’s case, he was deemed to be “low” on the risk score, with a total score of 3 out of 17 possible points. Scores of 0 to 4 are considered “low,” 5 to 8 “moderate,” and over 9 “higher”.
NPRAs are not done by prosecutors, judges or investigators; instead, they are completed by Sheriff’s Office administrative staff — in this case, a Sheriff Support Specialist.
Although the investigation noted suicidal and homicidal threats, NPRAs only use probable cause (PC) reports and warrants to base scoring on — neither of which included details of the underlying case:
Court Administrator Max Cortes confirmed this to be the case: “There was no mention of mental health issues in the [Support Specialist completed portion of the] NPRA or the Probable Cause document,” Cortes wrote. “These are the two documents the judge refers to when determining probable cause for an individual to stay in custody.”
When it comes to how the DA’s office uses the NPRA in framing their prosecutions — quite simply, it doesn’t.
According to Deputy District Attorney Tyson League, prosecutors don’t put much stock in NPRAs, and said he does not believe they accurately represent someone’s risk to the community, to the victim, or even their flight risk.
“The risk assessment is meant only for an initial screening of likelihood to appear in court – they are not foolproof tools,” League said. “From a prosecution perspective, we don’t generally rely very heavily on them. Our arguments [on risk] are largely made from the facts of the case [and] the PC. The majority of arguments that we make regarding bail at 48 hour hearings, that’s when those things come up.”
But that’s the exact issue: considerations into a suspect’s background, the crime, their likelihood to harm themselves or others, are all brought to the bail hearing. But when bail is posted, those arguments are never able to be made.
In Woodrum’s case, bail was set at $20,000, and $10,000 in Flores-Estrada’s case.
According to League, the law requires providing suspects a bail amount when arrested, barring specific circumstances. However, he said the amount is left to the discretion of the judge — which the DA’s office has no initial say in.
When asked if a judge could hypothetically issue a $1 million bail to keep a suspect in custody until their bail hearing, League said for many charges, the amount is set automatically by law.
For most felony charges, however, they are left up to the judge’s discretion, and can vary widely depending on jurisdiction — or even which court your case is in within a county — thanks to something called a bail schedule.
Bail Schedules
The topic of bail schedules is complex. While some bail amounts are set by statute, others are left up to the discretion of the Courts, and can vary widely.
For example, in the case of domestic battery charges, Nevada law says a domestic battery suspect can’t bail out until 12 hours after their arrest. The amount of bail can range from $3,000 to $15,000 for the charge based on severity.
However, the same law also states that none of these ranges have to apply if the defendant personally appears before the Court, or if the Court has otherwise been contacted to set bail.
However, a strangulation arrest in Carson City just a few months ago resulted in a bail amount of $15,000. From our records, the vast majority of Carson City arrests for domestic battery with strangulation resulted in bail amounts of $15,000 or more.
Flores-Estrada’s bail was set at $10,000, which he posted immediately and was released. Despite already being free, the amount was further reduced by a different judge the next day to just $5,000.
Nearly a decade ago, the Supreme Court of Nevada formed a subcommittee to provide clarity on statewide bail schedules — but their results clarified only how murky they are.
While criminal definitions are set by law, the bail amounts assigned to them can vary widely, even sometimes between courts in the same county.
During that meeting, it was reported a North Central regional bail schedule was in use, but a “fall back” schedule also existed for offenses not included in the main schedule. White Pine County used a similar schedule, but with only four specific felonies included. Washoe County was found to use a one-page schedule similar to that used by the Las Vegas Justice Court, but not all courts in Clark County use the same schedule.
One judge suggested the differences in bail amount could be location, because a charge that would result in prison in one area of the state may be treated “less seriously” in others.
The subcommittee even questioned the constitutionality of bail schedules, arguing that “bail schedules don’t accurately capture/consider the risk factors of the case — those who are high risk but have money can get out and re-offend; those without money are ‘trapped’ because they can’t bail out even though they are low risk.”
One way the subcommittee discussed combating that issue was through the NPRA, which was also unveiled in its early draft form during the meeting.
A pilot program began later that year, and in March 2019, courts statewide were ordered to incorporate the NPRA to provide uniform release decisions based on the risk posed by the defendant, not whether they could pay bail.
But those release decisions only come about during the bail hearing, and only combat the issue of those who are low risk but can’t afford to bail out.
For those who can afford to pay, but might be high risk, if they bail out prior to the NPRA being completed, the issue of high-risk defendants walking free still persists.
According to Lindsey, Flores-Estrada’s arrest only angered him further, and she reported multiple instances of harassment and what she felt were violations of her protection order.
However, due to administrative errors across multiple departments, reporting those violations proved difficult, and when the DA’s office delayed investigation until a plea deal was on the table, having them prosecuted so his bail could be revoked turned out to be impossible.
This is the second installment of a three-part series. Return tomorrow for our continued deep dive into the issues of Victims’ Rights, inconsistencies between departments, and the difficulties in accessing court documents — even for victims like Lindsey.
