If there is a hero in the murder of Mickie Costanzo, it must be Elko District Attorney Marc Torvinen.
Not for what he did, but for what he did not do.
Winning a death penalty case is a feather in the cap of any prosecutor and Torvinen had close to a slam dunk with Kody Patten.
Torvinen never had one and we know it might have been tempting with Toni Fratto’s confession to go for the kill.
Instead he offered Patten the same deal as before.
Marc won’t go into his reasons but we can speculate.
Yes it would have been a feather in his cap but on the other hand as a prosecutor he must have been aware of the almost obscene perversion of the death penalty in Nevada.
The unending appeals. The torture to the family of the victims.
And Marc Torvinen is simply too good a man to do that.
If the death penalty was ever enforced it might have been a different story.
But it is what it is.
So to those who are screaming for Mr. Torvinen’s blood in lieu of Kody Patten’s imagine in 30 years Kody Patten is pushing 50 lives peacefully in the wall to wall carpeted of death row. He may have even married one of the death sentence groupies who flock to death row inmates. He has just filed his 7th or 10th appeal. And the Costanzo family must once again travel to Las Vegas and relive the horror of March 3, 2011 all over again.
What does one say to a man who has saved you from that?
Thank you would be a good start.