Clark County Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Stefany Miley accused Las Vegas Metropolitan Police of gamesmanship delays as the city sought to uncover exactly what happened during that shooting, which was the largest mass shooting in the history of the country, leaving 58 victims dead and hundreds injured. Two more victims succumbed to their wounds later, leaving the official death toll at 60, not including the shooter, who also was killed.
As a result of her ordering for those files to be released, Judge Miley was put through extreme public scrutiny, and for all intents and purposes, her personal and professional world came tumbling down.
The Las Vegas Review Journal headline on April 10, 2018 read:
Judge says police stalling in release of Las Vegas shooting records
Judge Miley accused Metro of prolonging “the proceedings even further than it should have been, and that’s very concerning to me.” She also said, regarding Metro’s legal tactics, that, “It seems like a game.”
Judge Miley never has and never will condone the courts as a tool for manipulation, with one party or the other trying to bury critical information and records that should be public. And for that, she put a target on her back.
The April 10, 2018 LVRJ story reported the following:
“A judge accused the Metropolitan Police Department of gamesmanship Tuesday before denying another agency request to delay the release of 911 calls and body camera footage from the Route 91 Harvest festival massacre.
“ ‘I’m very frustrated, because I think that gamesmanship is going on here,’ District Judge Stefany Miley said in the contentious hearing. ‘It’s now months since the shooting occurred, and it’s still the same: delay, delay, delay. If one technique doesn’t work, then you switch to another one. That’s very concerning for the court.’ ”
A month earlier another district court judge had ordered Metro police to begin handing over recordings from the 1 October shooting immediately to media requesting them, Including the LVRJ, who had all sued LVMPD to get the records released. LVMPD asked for that ruling to be reconsidered and they also asked for a new judge. They got both. That’s how Judge Miley ended up hearing that case.
Judge Miley called out Metro police for their stalling tactics, denied their request to have the previous judge’s ruling to release the records reconsidered, and also denied LVMPD’s attempt to keep the recordings suppressed until their appeal to the Nevada State Supreme Court was heard.
The real question in all of this was, why? What was the point of the stalling tactics by LVMPD?
One of the reasons LVMPD came up with was the price tag for releasing the documents, which they said the media organizations would have to pay. They put that cost at $500,000 — a half a million dollars. The prior judge said he wouldn’t allow that kind of cost. The Metro police also argued that investigative techniques would be revealed by releasing the various documents and recordings the media was requesting. Judge Miley asked the department for an explanation of those costs and also why nothing had yet been released more than half a year after the shooting.
When the LVMPD took their case to the Supreme Court, they were subsequently ordered to comply with the lower court order and also were ordered to release the records.
LVMPD began to release records in May 2018. In an Associated Press report, which was one of the media entities suing to get the records released, they wrote:
“Thousands of pages of police reports, witness statements and dispatch logs released by Las Vegas police shed new detail on how officers and hotel security responded to the worst massacre in modern U.S. history.
“One account raised more questions about when police reached Paddock’s room at the Mandalay Bay resort and why they waited more than an hour to enter it.
“It was the third release this month of what Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo has said could become weekly disbursements of public records sought by media including The Associated Press.
“More than seven months after the attack, the documents did not answer the question of motive. Police and the FBI said they would not comment on the newly released information and that the shooting is still under investigation.”
Judge Miley played a key role in getting these records released to the media, which then was able to report more accurately on the progress — or lack thereof — on the case, what actually happened that evening, and the motive of the gunman as well as his support system.