Carson rapist loses appeal

Nevada's Supreme Court has rejected David Harington's appeal of multiple rape and kidnapping charges involving his former girlfriend.

He was convicted of taking the woman and her 10-month-old daughter into the hills outside Carson City. There, prosecutors said, Harington beat the victim for some five hours while the child remained in the back seat of his car. After that, he took the woman and child to Brunswick Canyon where the woman was raped before being released.

He was convicted by a Carson City jury of two counts each of second-degree kidnapping, battery with a deadly weapon and sexual assault plus one count of child endangerment.

Carson District Judge Mike Fondi sentenced him to two consecutive life sentences for rape plus prison terms of 15, 10, 6 and 6 years - some of them consecutive to the other prison terms.

Harington appealed, arguing he should not have been convicted of two kidnapping counts, that the judge made more than one unconstitutional ruling that shifted the burden of proof to him and that the prosecutor is guilty of misconduct.

That appeal was dismissed in 1995.

In his new appeal, Harington claims his lawyers both at trial and on appeal were so ineffective as to deny him a fair trial. He says his public defenders should have fought against allowing several pieces of evidence into the case.

The high court ruled that to support that argument Harington must prove "there is a reasonable probability that the result of the proceeding would have been different."

"Harington was not prejudiced because even if the court suppressed the evidence, the outcome at trial would not have been different in light of the overwhelming evidence of Harington's guilt," the opinion says.

The panel, consisting of Justices Cliff Young, Deborah Agosti and Myron Leavitt, agreed that Harington's claim his lawyers didn't do their job is without merit and ordered the appeal dismissed.