A dispute over one repeat arrestee has grown into a broader court battle over who controls electronic monitoring in Clark County.
LAS VEGAS, NV — A clash between Las Vegas police and a local judge over the release of a defendant with 35 prior arrests has widened into a high-stakes fight over who decides whether jailed people can go home on electronic monitoring while their cases move through court.
The dispute centers on Joshua Sanchez-Lopez, a defendant accused in January of grand larceny of a motor vehicle. But the argument now reaches far beyond one case. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department says Nevada law lets the sheriff refuse to place someone in its monitoring program if that person poses an unreasonable risk to public safety. Las Vegas Justice Court leaders and public defenders say judges, not police officials, make release decisions after weighing risk, court appearance history and legal standards. The fight has already produced emergency motions, contempt requests and filings before the Nevada Supreme Court.
According to court records and hearing transcripts, Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Eric Goodman set bail at $25,000 for Sanchez-Lopez on Jan. 13 and ordered that he be placed on high-level electronic monitoring if he posted bond. Sanchez-Lopez posted bond on Jan. 24, but he remained in custody into early February. At a Feb. 5 hearing, Goodman was given a letter from the police department’s house arrest unit saying Sheriff Kevin McMahill had determined that supervising Sanchez-Lopez electronically posed an unreasonable risk to public safety. The letter pointed to a prior episode in 2020 in which Sanchez-Lopez allegedly showed he would not follow monitoring rules. On Feb. 9, with the defendant still in jail, Goodman voiced open anger from the bench. “Call me crazy, but I’m the judge,” Goodman said, according to the transcript. “I would like to think that my orders are actual orders.”
Police and the court system are not arguing over whether Sanchez-Lopez should simply walk free. They are fighting over control of a specific program run by Metro inside the Clark County Detention Center. The department describes the system as an alternative to incarceration that uses GPS ankle monitors and places people on either medium-level or high-level supervision. High-level monitoring sharply limits when a participant can leave home, while medium-level supervision carries looser restrictions. Metro attorney Michael Dickerson has argued that once a judge approves release, the department still has an independent duty to decide whether a person can safely be accepted into that program. He said the sheriff cannot be forced to “violate the law” by supervising someone the department believes is too dangerous. Public defender David Westbrook has taken the opposite view, saying Metro is keeping people in jail after judges have already made release decisions, and doing so without a proper way for defendants to challenge the department’s action. The central legal question is whether the sheriff’s screening authority can override, delay or narrow a judge’s release order.
That legal fight turns on Nevada’s electronic supervision law. State law says the sheriff or chief of police may supervise a prisoner electronically if the person’s living situation meets program rules and if the sheriff or chief of police concludes that supervision poses no unreasonable risk to public safety. Metro relies heavily on that language. The department has said only a small number of cases are in dispute and that about 450 people are on electronic monitoring at any given time. Dickerson said roughly 14 people had been rejected so far this year, with about half denied only for medium-level monitoring but still eligible for the stricter high-level version. Court leaders say the problem is not the size of the disputed group but the principle behind it. Las Vegas Justice Court Chief Judge Melisa De La Garza has said judges already review public safety, flight risk, pretrial assessments and lawyers’ arguments before ordering release. In her view, having someone outside that hearing process effectively veto the result raises both separation-of-powers and due-process concerns. What remains unclear is how the Nevada Supreme Court will read the statute when it is applied to people awaiting trial rather than serving a sentence after conviction.
The Sanchez-Lopez case drew attention because of the defendant’s record and because both sides used it to make broader points. Metro said in court filings that Sanchez-Lopez has 35 arrests and that he has prior prison time. The department also said he was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in Nye County. Earlier reporting tied him to a 2022 Nye County overdose death case in which prosecutors accused three people of supplying fentanyl and oxycodone pills that killed a Pahrump woman. In the current Las Vegas vehicle theft case, however, Sanchez-Lopez is not charged with a violent felony. His public defenders argued that Goodman knew his criminal history and still set conditions he believed were appropriate. After the standoff continued, Goodman ultimately agreed to move Sanchez-Lopez to the Las Vegas Justice Court’s Pretrial Compliance Unit, a court-run supervision option that requires regular reporting and tracks whether defendants follow release conditions. That shift eased the immediate custody fight in his case, but it did not settle the larger question of whether Metro can refuse a judge’s order for placement in the police-run monitoring program.
The dispute is also not limited to one courtroom. In one separate case, Matthew Cordero-Davila pleaded guilty to coercion constituting domestic violence. Prosecutors agreed not to oppose his release on medium-level monitoring, and District Judge Erika Mendoza initially ordered that arrangement. Metro later said Cordero-Davila posed too much risk for medium-level supervision because of his criminal history and the need to protect people covered by a no-contact order, though the department said he could be suitable for high-level monitoring. Mendoza eventually sided with Metro and rejected an effort to hold the department in contempt, placing him on the stricter form of supervision instead. In another case, North Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Belinda Harris ordered $150,000 bail and high-level monitoring for Jaeion Severin, who is accused of shooting at an officer and trying to break into a car. Court records show he posted bail, but Metro rejected him for house arrest, and Harris then kept him detained. Those cases suggest judges themselves are divided over how much authority the department has under the statute.
The deeper backdrop is how pretrial release works in a crowded urban court system balancing liberty, safety and case volume. Las Vegas Justice Court operates its own pretrial services system and says its Pretrial Compliance Unit is designed to monitor defendants, require check-ins and report noncompliance back to judges and lawyers. Metro, by contrast, runs the detention center’s electronic monitoring program and says participants must wear GPS devices, follow strict movement rules and submit to program screening before acceptance. The overlap between those systems appears to be what turned routine release orders into a constitutional dispute. Defense lawyers say the executive branch is stepping into a judicial role by deciding who remains jailed after a court hearing. Metro and its allies answer that courts cannot order the sheriff to use department staff and equipment in a way the sheriff believes violates the law or endangers corrections officers and the public. Former Clark County District Attorney David Roger has backed Metro’s position, while longtime defense attorney and former prosecutor Robert Langford has said the courts should prevail. The public language on both sides has become unusually sharp, reflecting how much institutional authority is at stake.
For now, the conflict is headed into higher courts and possibly into contempt proceedings as well. Public defenders have filed a motion that could lead to Metro being held in contempt in the Sanchez-Lopez matter, though the department strongly opposes that step. Metro has also asked the Nevada Supreme Court for extraordinary relief, and the public defender’s office has filed its own challenge. The justices are expected to decide whether the law gives the sheriff the final word over access to the police-run monitoring program or whether judicial release orders control unless they are changed through normal court process. That ruling could affect future bail hearings involving domestic violence allegations, auto theft, weapons cases and other felony matters in which judges want close supervision without full detention. Until then, some defendants may continue to face delays, modified release terms or transfers into court-run compliance programs instead of Metro’s house arrest system.
Author note: Last updated March 15, 2026.