For months panel members have asked to review the case files of several children who've died while in the custody of Clark County's Child Protective Services.

Persistence has paid off and the county has agreed to open some of its files. Later this month the panel will review the deaths.

The first is that of Joshua Sharp, a 17-month-old who died at Child Haven, the county's shelter for abused and neglected children.

The second, baby boy Charles, a 7-month-old who died in foster care. His foster mother has since been charged with his murder.

The third is 2-year old Adacelli Snyder. She died from severe neglect in 2005, a year after CPS closed its case with her family.

Assemblywoman Susan Gerhardt, D-Clark County, pushed for the review. "I have felt from the beginning that it was key before we turn in this report, that we have the chance to look at recent cases, to see to it if improvements have been made," she told.

The unlikely saga of Robyn Rubio -- the little girl whose life was saved Saturday when beer-guzzling homeless men lifted a 5,000 pound Cadillac off her crushed body -- grew more unusual Wednesday as her 30-year-old mother tried to explain why she had not gone to the hospital to see her daughter.

"I wasn't put on the visiting list for ICU (the intensive care unit) at first," Tina Rubio said, chain-smoking as she sat shivering on the patio of a small North Vegas apartment.

Why not?

"I don't know," the mother said.

Tina Rubio's parents have legal custody of 9-year-old Robyn, who was struck by a car near Lake Mead and Las Vegas boulevards Saturday when she darted into the path of a Cadillac being driven near her apartment complex.

She remains in serious condition at University Medical Center.

The girl's grandparents were unavailable for comment Wednesday and told UMC authorities that they did not want to talk with the media or have their recuperating granddaughter interviewed.

Prosecutors say a woman's boyfriend committed horrific acts of violence against her child. They say the toddler's mother allowed the abuse to take place. The woman's three-year-old daughter nearly died.

Instead of being held accountable for her role in the neglect, the entire case was on the verge of evaporating because Rezaei is a German National. It was looking like she would be leaving the country by the end of the week. But breaking news in this case arrived Wednesday evening.

A Virginia appellate court ruled Tuesday in a closely watched lesbian custody dispute that the biological mother must answer to the laws of Vermont, where she and her former partner entered into a civil union and raised a child together.

The ruling skirted a broader question key to the national debate: whether Virginia can be forced to recognize such a union sanctioned in another state.

But it was celebrated by gay and lesbian organizations across the country for treating the parental relationship as it would any heterosexual one.

CARSON CITY -- Lawmakers were told Tuesday they are in good shape for a quick start to the 2007 session on Feb. 5, but that the new constitutional requirement to fund public education before passing any other money bills could pose a challenge in the rush to adjournment in June.

Legislative Counsel Bureau Director Lorne Malkiewich said 224 bills have been drafted out of 768 requests as of Nov. 20, putting lawmakers on good footing for a lot of early bill introductions.

Five Palo Verde High School students charged with multiple counts of arson caught a break from Clark County District Attorney David Roger on Tuesday.

Roger, who has been weighing whether to have the teens face the charges as adults, decided to instead let the case proceed through the juvenile court system.

The case involves three first-degree arson charges related to summer incidents at Faith Lutheran Junior/Senior High School, where Molotov cocktails were used to scorch two portable classrooms.

A fourth arson charge is based on a firebomb set off in Summerlin's Trails Park.

"The juveniles have very little criminal history, if at all," Roger said. "There was very little damage to the building, and lives were not at risk at the time they manufactured these Molotov cocktails and threw them at the buildings."

Stripped of their dreams of football glory and the comforts of home, five Palo Verde High School students charged with multiple counts of arson stood before Judge William Voy on Monday and asked to be released from the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center....

Voy ordered all five juveniles to remain in custody until risk assessments can be presented to the court later this week.

The real world can be incredibly unforgiving. It won't give you your eye back after it has been poked out, and it won't unkill the friend who just died. The criminal justice system is also unforgiving. If you "caused" the disaster, then you are going to have to "pay" for it, even if this was a once-in-a-lifetime misjudgment and the payment does nothing to repair the damage.

You see it in juvenile justice. Two teenagers get involved in a trivial dispute. One of them goes home, gets a gun (because there are plenty of guns in this neighborhood), comes back and shoots the other. In fact, this happens to nearly every teenager: They lose control. Probably the only reason this particular scenario never happened to us during our own adolescence is that we didn't have access to a gun or have it in our hands at the precise moment we lost control.

Nevada law can be brutal and inflexible. If a youth of any age is accused of murder, he is automatically tried as an adult, and if he is convicted in adult court, he must be given a long mandatory sentence, sometimes 40 years. Thereby, a momentary loss of control and impulsive pulling of a trigger takes not one life, but two.

Although both families are antagonistic toward each other and dispute the facts of the case, they do agree that the system that allowed this situation to occur is flawed. Rodriguez said they were given false hope. The Lopez family said they were ignored.

Rodriguez said that after caring for Nathaly for seven months with no word from the biological mother or other relatives, they inquired about adopting the little girl.

"I'm not saying, 'Oh my gosh, we're better than her,' " Rodriguez, who was raised by a single mother, said of Lopez. "We're a mother and father wanting to take her out of the system and provide an opportunity for her."

According to court records, Clark County Child Protective Services had contacted Maria Lopez when Nathaly was born. Lopez was caring for her daughter Yesenia Sosa's five other children and social workers believed she would be overwhelmed by a sixth.

With the blessings from county social services and District Judge Gerald Hardcastle, adoption proceedings moved forward in the summer of 2004.

The Rodriguezes believe they have since been caught up in a web of politics.

On behalf of Maria Lopez, Barbara Buckley, an attorney with Clark County Legal Services, filed a petition to stop the proceedings just days before the adoption was to be finalized. Buckley, a state assemblywoman, also appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court Hardcastle's earlier decision to move forward with the adoption and terminate the family's guardianship rights.

Buckley said Lopez had petitioned the court for custody of Nathaly from the day she was born.

"Maria was pretty much ignored by the foster care system," Buckley said. "She wanted her grandchild and they told her she would be too overwhelmed. They gave her custody of five; that same month, they said she couldn't handle six."

DENVER — It was a note from the Oklahoma Health Department that started the chain of events that would propel Ed Swaya and Gregory Hampel into a federal court here.

The two men, partners for 13 years, had arranged through courts in their home state of Washington to adopt their daughter, Vivian, whose Oklahoma mother had agreed to give the baby to the two men when she was born in 2002.

When the couple asked Oklahoma to issue her birth certificate, the state sent a form with spaces for the names of the mother and father. Swaya and Hampel crossed out the categories and marked themselves as "parent #1" and "parent #2."

The state didn't accept it, and sent back the form. The couple then listed Hampel as the father and Swaya as the mother. Oklahoma rejected it, writing: "We could not establish maternity for Mr. Swaya."

Nonetheless, Oklahoma's attorney general warned that the state would have to honor the legal adoption order from Washington state.

The Legislature stepped in, passing a bill prohibiting the state from acknowledging adoptions by same-sex couples from other jurisdictions, setting the stage for a legal battle that some gay rights activists fear could become increasingly common as states seek to curtail the abilities of same-sex couples to adopt children....

Oklahoma officials could not be reached for comment last week, but in court papers they argued that their state had the right to set its own policy on adoptions by same-sex couples. They argued that the purpose of the law was "to halt the erosion of the mainstream definition of the family unit and provide the possibility for the optimal environment for the child's development in a home with a male parent and a female parent."

In May, a federal judge in Oklahoma found that the law did "little if anything to promote the traditional family unit" and attempted "to penalize the plaintiff children for the acts of their parents."

The law "in essence tells one of the adult plaintiffs, 'You are no longer the parent of your child,' " added U.S. District Court Judge Robin J. Cauthron.

On Nov. 17, the state argued before the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver that Cauthron's decision should be overturned. It could be several months before a ruling is issued.

ONE OF MY OLD law school classmates pledged at least $250,000 to Stanford Law School this year. Another gave at least $100,000, and 12 others donated $10,000 or more apiece. Then there's Philip H. Knight, the founder of Nike, who pledged $100 million as the lead gift for a new, $250-million campus for his alma mater, the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

I too feel privileged to have attended Stanford. But, as the end-of-year charitable-giving season is upon us, I question whether the hundreds of millions of dollars donated to major law and business schools couldn't be better spent.

The lawyer stood sobbing in the center of a darkened hotel conference room, ringed by dozens of other personal-injury lawyers.

As the attorney recalled the final moments of his mother's life, his voice cracked and his body shook with repressed grief. And all around the circle, the lawyers watching him also began to weep.

Then the others began to make their own confessions: "My parents died...," one began, his voice husky with tears. "I was disconnected from my father...," another said. "All of a sudden, I thought about my mother...," a third added.

In the corner, Jude Basile, a tall, charismatic attorney in black jeans and black cowboy boots — a diamond ring on one finger — nodded approvingly.

Basile is a trial lawyer specializing in wrongful-death and personal-injury lawsuits. He also is a proponent of psychodrama, a group therapy technique that is becoming increasingly popular among lawyers — particularly those who sue big businesses and corporations — as a way to prepare for trial and connect with a jury.

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We still believe Lawyers Can Be Saved.

FRESNO — Lance Cpl. Robert Quiroz was in Kuwait about to deploy to Iraq last August when his wife and high school sweetheart, Candice, suffered a brain aneurism following the birth of their son, Roman.

He scrambled back to Fresno to find his wife being kept alive on life support so he could say goodbye.

"On August 21, 2006, my whole world ended," Quiroz, 20, wrote on his MySpace Web page. "Just because you see me smile and you see me laugh doesn't come close to the way I feel inside. I will never be as happy as I was until I'm with my wife again."

His site was a shrine to Candice. But nowhere in that final posting did Quiroz appear to take any comfort in his two young children, 14-month-old Kylie and the infant Roman, whose birth was Candice's final legacy. There's only grief, anger and a sense of increasing isolation.

Last Saturday, police found Roman Quiroz dead and arrested his father on suspicion of killing the baby.

The few words that Charlene Snyder softly spoke as she confessed to allowing her 2-year-old daughter to die of starvation and neglect could hardly be heard Wednesday over the routine paper shuffling and whispering in District Judge David Wall's courtroom.

Snyder changed her initial plea and acknowledged guilt in the death of her daughter, Adacelli, in one of the most horrific cases of child abuse and neglect in Clark County.

Robbers caught a Las Vegas corrections officer with his pants down last month having sex with an underage prostitute, authorities said Wednesday. They were able to make off not only with his uniform but also his handgun, badge and Metropolitan Police Department ID....

Police weren't certain whether the prostitute was involved in the robbery, because she had sex with Washington. Normally in "trick rolls," the "john" is robbed before any sex takes place, police said.

But police "are leaning toward this being an organized" trick roll, Snodgrass said, because the two robbers are believed to be from the Balkans and the girl was born in Romania. The teen is a former foster child, a source familiar with the investigation said.

She had previously been booked into the Clark County Detention Center under a false name as an adult. But police discovered who she was after checking various records, Snodgrass said.

Five Palo Verde High School students, including four varsity football players, were arrested Wednesday in connection with two arson fires at Faith Lutheran Junior/Senior High School in August....

"Five juveniles who attend Palo Verde High School were arrested today in connection with the firebombing of Faith Lutheran in August," said Scott Allison, acting spokesman for the Clark County Fire Department. "Four of the five are members of the Palo Verde football team."

Allison said arson investigators had planned to interview the suspects on Wednesday, but the interviews developed into arrests. Allison said it was his understanding that those arrested were taken to the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center.

We now have a plan for improving child welfare in Clark County. It’s called “Safe Futures,” and everyone seems to be on board. First unveiled on Sept. 19, it is supposed to cost $25-30 million and require 150 new personnel, mostly caseworkers. A large portion of these positions are supposed to start Jan. 1, about 40 days from now.

Family Court Chronicles does not oppose the plan—It is a nice Christmas list of things we would all like to see happen.—but we’ve started having nightmares about implementation. We know nothing about how the recruiting effort is going, but we are terrified by certain theoretical concerns.

When it comes to the law, married couples have it easy. Who gets what after a divorce? Will a spouse be able to make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse? Married couples have at least a general idea of where they stand on such issues because of the legal recognition that the law bestows on marriage. But unmarried couples who live together? That's a bit more tricky and good reason for cohabiting couples to draw up a few basic legal documents....

While married partners enjoy community property rights, inheritance rights, survivorship rights to such things as Social Security and legal standing to sue if something should happen to their partner, unmarried couples don't, Chapman says.

Unmarried couples also can find themselves at a disadvantage in matters of health insurance and health care. "Absolutely, hands down, we get more complaints about health issues than anything else," says Nicky Grist, executive director of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a New York City-based advocacy organization for unmarried couples and single people....

An unmarried couple should have a valid cohabitation agreement, Chapman says. "That is a written contract that exists between the two parties. In that contract, you spell out, 'This is what we're doing, this is what we want, and if anything happens, this is the way we want things split.'"

The couple also should have a living will, Grist says. "That is a medical power of attorney that says, 'This is what I want to happen if I become ill and this is the person I designate to make my decisions.'"

Then the couple need a limited durable power of attorney, Chapman says. "That assigns somebody to be your attorney-in-fact. This is somebody who can take care of your financial matters and all legal matters if you are disabled....

Finally, the unmarried partners each should have a will, "because, remember, your nonmarried partner is not necessarily going to get anything" after your death, Chapman says.

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This is relevant to our Oct. 9 newsletter: BAN GAY MARRIAGE (Heterosexual Marriage, Too!)

Narcissism is not what it appears to be. It appears to be a falling in love with oneself. Thinking others are inferior. Cocky. Condescending. Arrogant.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Narcissism is the precise opposite of self-love. It is, in fact, a tragedy of self-loathing....

Attempt to look behind the images and you will suffer the narcissist's rage. He will control, demean, belittle, withhold and withdraw. Turn passive-aggressive. The aggrandizements will actually escalate. If necessary, the narcissist will attempt to ruin you....

But more commonly, the trump card of the ordinary narcissist is walking away. Your punishment for daring to inquire about the person behind the image is that you will be abandoned.

Notice the exclusive use of masculine pronouns. I'm not a sexist; it's deliberate. In our culture, an overwhelming disproportion of narcissism is represented in men. There are observable dynamics in Western Civilization that virtually guarantee most modern males will spend their lives struggling with narcissistic features in their personality. (Or not struggling, if they're too narcissistic to care.)

After months of hinting that the system was ripe for examination, the Nevada Supreme Court on Thursday announced the creation of study commission that will evaluate every facet of the judiciary. The 28-member panel will get right to work, with its first meeting scheduled for next month. The commission could issue some recommendations to the 2007 Legislature, but might not complete its review until sometime in 2008.

Melanie Ochs may stand accused of murdering her foster child, but on Friday her focus was on reuniting with her two surviving children.

"I love my children, and I would do anything to get them back," Ochs said during a brief interview.

Moments earlier, Ochs entered a no-contest plea in Family Court to a petition alleging child abuse and neglect. The petition specifically involved allegations that she physically abused or improperly supervised the infant known as "Baby Boy Charles," her 7-month-old foster child, who died Aug. 4, and that she neglected all her children by having a messy house.

Rosalind Fletcher, who was charged with the death of her 3-month-old baby, pleaded guilty in District Court on Thursday to second-degree murder and child abuse and neglect.

She was originally charged with murder by child abuse, which carries a sentence of 20 years to life in prison, and three counts of abuse and neglect, each punishable with a sentence of two to 20 years in prison.

In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors lowered the charges against her. For the second-degree murder charge she faces 10 to 25 years in prison or 10 to life, plus two to 20 years for the one remaining count of child abuse.

A man and woman are facing felony charges following the abuse of a three-year-old girl who nearly died.

The child is with a foster family recovering from her injuries but the man accused of beating her is free and the child's mother may escape felony charges by leaving the country. The child's mother is a German citizen, who authorities are fighting to keep in this country.

Arash Hashemi has a temper. Eyewitness News cameras happened to catch up with him a few months ago on another I-Team story about aggressive drivers. He yelled at our news crew and made obscene gestures.

Sheila Leslie [Democrat-Reno] will serve as chairwoman of health and human services; Bernie Anderson [Democrat-Sparks] will serve as chairman of judiciary...

Brooks and her nephews were among the 27 adoptions finalized in Clark County Family Court as part of the fifth annual local celebration of Adoption Day....

Tom Morton, director of Clark County Family Services, said about 178 children are in county custody who are in need of adoptive parents. That number includes 46 sibling groups.

Although the county has 175 families who have been approved and licensed as prospective adoptive parents, the problem is in making the match, Morton said. Generally, those interested in adopting children are looking for infants or very young children. And generally, the children waiting to be adopted are older and may have special needs.

Dozens of children walked into Clark County Family Court Wednesday morning as foster kids. But when they left in the afternoon, those same children had new adoptive parents and permanent homes....

The 5th Annual National Adoption Day was highlighted in Clark County with the finalizing of 27 adoptions and providing 38 children with new parents and permanent homes.

Fed up with graffiti vandals they rarely catch, authorities have come up with a new way to bait informants into giving up taggers -- cash.

The Turn-In-A-Tagger program launched Tuesday will see tipsters receiving up to $500 in reward money for ratting out marker and spray paint-toting vandals.

I once had a cat by the name of Underfoot. I called her that because she always was... under foot. Whenever you tried to walk anywhere in the house, she would dash to your feet and pace back and forth right in front of you. Should would try to rub against the front of your legs as you walked, which often tripped unsuspecting visitors.

She also got stepped on—a lot—but this did nothing to curb her behavior. She was Underfoot and always would be.

Underfoot was semi-feral when I found her, the product of a dysfunctional household down the street that produced many litters of kittens but wouldn't care for them. She was emaciated when she started hanging out around my house. I left food for her outside and eventually used the food to lure her inside over the course of several days. She became domesticated in a manner of speaking, but it was never a very satisfying relationship for either of us.

Q. For the first time in my life, I know with complete clarity and certainty that I want to marry my boyfriend. I am a divorced woman of 36 and have never been more sure of anything in my life. He has just come out of a bad divorce and sometimes comments how he will never get married again. Should I give him more time or am I just wasting my time? How can I tell? -- K.J., Las Vegas

A. That's just it. You can't tell.

You say he has "just come out of a bad divorce." Then, frankly, there are lots of things you can't know. And I promise you there are even more things he can't know, even about himself.

The report makes 12 recommendations for improving hot line efficiency, many of which already have been set in motion. Tom Morton, director of Clark County Child and Family Services, said staff members have been directed to call clerical workers -- not the hot line -- from the field should they require assistance. Supervision of the hot line also will be expanded in January, as part of an overall improvement plan for the department.

Family Services is recruiting for 121 new positions that can be filled Jan. 1. Many of those jobs will be dedicated to the formation of 24-hour Child Protective Services response teams that can respond to hot line emergencies around the clock.

Barbara Buckley, a 46-year-old lawyer and veteran Democratic legislator from Las Vegas, was unanimously elected speaker of the Assembly on Wednesday night, becoming the first woman to hold the post.

Buckley has been an assemblywoman since 1995 and majority leader since 2001....

Buckley is the executive director of Clark County Legal Services. She might be best known for her efforts in 2005 to set up a system to help Nevadans secure lower costs prescription drugs from Canada. She also sponsored the bill limiting interest rates and penalties that can be charged by payday loan companies.

Buckley's elevation to Assembly speaker has been in little doubt since the end of the 2005 Legislature when Speaker Richard Perkins, D-Henderson, announced that he would not seek re-election and urged members to name Buckley as his replacement.

Las Vegas police said the 33-year-old was shot to death during a birthday and Halloween party on Oct. 29 in the 200 block of Samantha Street, near Nellis Boulevard and Stewart Avenue.

They said Ortega was shot to death by a 15-year-old after a fight erupted at the party when the teen began throwing cake at people inside the house.

Richard Eugene Henley was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on Tuesday as an adult and charged with murder with a deadly weapon and two counts of attempted murder.

Henley, formerly a student at Las Vegas High School, was arrested last week by police but remained at the Clark County Juvenile Detention Center until authorities certified him as an adult.

In the race for Family Court Department M, former Family Court Judge Robert Lueck lost to William Potter.

Potter, a Henderson native with a law degree from Brigham Young University, has worked as a judge pro tem and has owned a legal practice for the past 10 years.

The final tally showed Potter ahead 55 percent to Lueck's 45 percent.

Lueck ran on a nine-point plan to make Family Court more efficient.

He said Monday that regardless of the results on Election Day, he planned to bring a bill draft to the Legislature to reform Clark County Family Court.

Potter said he planned to move cases efficiently through the system and issue common-sense rulings to help families "move on from the animosity and fighting."

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This is apparently a good thing. Within Family Court, Potter is liked and Leuck is widely despised. Leuck is seen as capricious and a bit off his rocker. His two nasty divorces and the cruel things he said during them seemed to have turned most people off. He spent big during the campaign however and generated far more signage than Potter. The triumph for evil came in District Court, where the rotund Elizabeth Halverson won a seat. (District Court is off our beat, however.)

Here's the car that the new judge drives...

In the other Supreme Court race, with 1,650 precincts out of 1,913 precincts reporting, Douglas had received 49 percent of the vote, while Steel received 36 percent and another 15 percent chose "none of these candidates."

Douglas, 58, was appointed in March 2004 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Myron Leavitt. He defeated Las Vegas attorney Joel Hansen later that year for the right to serve out the remaining two years of Leavitt's term.

Steel, 53, first ran for a Supreme Court seat in 2004, when she sought the seat vacated by Justice Miriam Shearing. Although Steel survived the primary election that year, she lost in the general election to Jim Hardesty.

Douglas served as a Clark County district judge from 1996 to 2004. He previously worked for 11 years as a Clark County deputy district attorney. He spent a year in the family support division of the district attorney's office before moving to the civil division.

Steel ran unsuccessfully for a Clark County Family Court seat in 1992, two years after receiving her law degree.

She was elected to the Assembly in 1994 but resigned in February 1996 to become chief of staff for then-Lt. Gov. Lonnie Hammargren. Later that year, Steel was elected to a new seat in Family court.

Clark County now knows what's wrong with its child abuse hotline and what needs to be done to fix it.

Fifteen-hundred phone calls to the child abuse hotline were recorded and reviewed by an independent consultant in June and July of this year.

"It's better than I expected," said Tom Morton, Clark County Family Services. The report revealed 18-percent of the calls -- that's about one in five -- were mishandled. And eight-percent of those were reports of suspected abuse or neglect that should have been followed up on but were not.

An ambiguous sign seen this morning near Yuma, Arizona. Can you parse?

Steve Hiltz, the project's directing attorney, listened Friday as Family Court Judge Gerald Hardcastle reviewed the cases of 54 children and learned that many of them have been placed with relatives or in foster homes. All of the children are under the age of 3 and have been kept at hospital nurseries or at Child Haven, the county's emergency shelter for juveniles who have been removed from parental custody.

"Our goal behind this is to stop kids this age from going into Child Haven at all, except in an emergency situation for a couple of days," Hiltz said.

Hardcastle scheduled Friday's hearing to review the cases of all children under the age of 3 who have been kept at hospitals for more than 10 days after being deemed ready for discharge or at Child Haven for more than 40 days.

The federal public defender of Nevada on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the 1988 conviction of a Las Vegas man who was not allowed to cross-examine his 6-year-old stepdaughter and was convicted of sexually abusing her.

"If he were tried today, those statements (by the stepdaughter) would not have come in," said Franny Forsman, the public defender.

Forsman was referring to a 2004 ruling by the Supreme Court that says statements made outside court can only be admissible if the witness is unavailable and the defense had the opportunity to cross-examine that witness.

But the 2004 ruling came 16 years after Marvin Bockting received a life sentence for the 1987 rape of his stepdaughter while her mother was away from the Las Vegas motel where they lived.

The city of Las Vegas is considering adopting an ordinance that would force parents to perform 50 to 99 hours of community service if their child is caught defacing property and the parents knew about it.

Perhaps adding to the punishment for both parties: Community service must be done by parent and child together.

Mayor Oscar Goodman said he's pursuing the ordinance to make parents pay more attention to their children.

"I want parents to take a stick to their kids," he said.

Goodman had previously expressed a desire to chop off the thumbs of "taggers" as well as put offenders in medieval-style stocks. Those proposed punishments were not taken seriously....

Under the proposal, parents would have to be tried separately and found guilty of contributing to the delinquency or neglect of a child. Only then would parents face the mandatory penalty of 50 to 99 hours of community service.

"I'm not saying it's an easy burden of proof," said City Attorney Brad Jerbic. "But if they're providing the child with a spray can, or allowing this to go on and knowing about it, we're going to hold them responsible."...

Since April, Clark County has conducted a pilot program for youth convicted of graffiti. The kids come out on Saturday mornings with county work crews to cover and clean up graffiti. They are also counseled by probation officers.

"Many of the children we're seeing, parents are not aware of what their children are doing," said Cherie Townsend, director of Clark County's juvenile justice services department. She said that of the 77 kids who have participated in the program, only one has re-offended on graffiti.

"It's better then we had hoped," Townsend said. "It's a remarkable, successful program."