DOES IT TAKE AN ACT OF GOD TO GET BASIC CONSTITUTIONAL DUE PROCESS AT THE VEGAS EIGHTH JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT?

After Repeated Efforts to Secure a Neutral Judge, Sachs Is Forced to Demand Action From Nevada’s Highest Judicial Administrative Officer, Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon

By Austin Sachs

How many motions, notices, emails, service attempts, constitutional citations, administrative escalations, and documented warnings should it take before a criminal defendant receives something as basic as a judge who is not being asked to pass judgment on her own challenged conduct?

Apparently, at the Las Vegas Eighth Judicial District Court, the answer remains: more.

On September 16, 2026, I took an extraordinary step that no criminal defendant who has steadfastly maintained his innocence should have to take merely to obtain one of the most elementary protections of constitutional due process.  I formally escalated my unresolved neutral-tribunal dispute beyond Eighth Judicial District Court Chief Judge Tierra Jones and directly to Nevada Supreme Court Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon, the constitutional administrative head of Nevada’s court system.

The relief I demanded was not a dismissal.

It was not an acquittal.

It was not a favorable ruling on the merits.

It was a neutral judge.

That is all.

My September 11 motion seeks to withdraw the guilty plea that I contend was coerced by intolerable governmental pressure produced through what I allege and have documented was a continuing course of procedurally unlawful instigation by Chief Deputy District Attorney Dena Rinetti and corresponding procedurally unlawful judicial action and acquiescence by District Judge Jessica Peterson. Peterson is not some peripheral figure in that motion. Her own challenged acts, statements, rulings, omissions, and alleged contribution to the escalating coercive pressure are part of the factual and causal chain the merits judge will be required to examine. Yet Peterson has still not recused herself. THAT, IN AND OF ITSELF, IS INEXCUSABLE.

The presently scheduled October 5 hearing therefore creates the extraordinary prospect that Peterson could exercise substantive authority over a constitutional challenge requiring examination of her own challenged conduct and its alleged contribution to the coercion of the plea she would be asked to decide whether to set aside.

That is why my September 16 filing demanded that Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon intervene through his statewide administrative authority NOW, before Peterson is permitted to exercise substantive authority over that motion, and ensure that it is removed from Peterson and reassigned to a genuinely neutral district judge.

As I told the Nevada judiciary in that filing:

“There is no constitutionally tolerable justification for requiring Defendant to appear on October 5, 2026, before the very judge, Peterson, whose own challenged conduct is a material component of the coercion claim she would be asked to adjudicate, while the threshold neutral-tribunal issue remains unresolved.”

This should not be difficult.

The United States Supreme Court put the principle in remarkably simple language decades ago:

“A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.”

In re Murchison, 349 U.S. 133, 136 (1955).

The Supreme Court went further. Due process does not concern itself only with proven actual bias. The law has “always endeavored to prevent even the probability of unfairness,” and the Court stated the fundamental proposition that “no man can be a judge in his own case.”

That is precisely why Peterson cannot be treated as some incidental figure in this controversy. My September 11 motion places her own challenged conduct inside the factual and causal chain of the coercion claim she would otherwise be positioned to adjudicate.

So why has obtaining that BASIC protection required this much work?

THE ROAD TO NEVADA’S HIGHEST JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICER

This did not begin with Herndon.

And it did not begin with Tierra Jones.

At the center of the present constitutional problem is Jessica Peterson, the judge whose challenged conduct forms a material component of the coercion claim and who nevertheless has not recused herself from the proceeding in which that conduct must be examined.

I deliberately waited approximately two months for former Chief Judge Jerry Wiese’s term as Chief Judge to end on June 30, 2026 before again seeking Peterson’s disqualification. As my September 16 Notice explains, Wiese had repeatedly ruled adversely in earlier Peterson-disqualification proceedings involving both me and my wife, and I had already challenged his handling of those matters as legally and procedurally defective.

Tierra Jones became Chief Judge effective July 1.

On July 13, I sought Peterson’s disqualification specifically so that the forthcoming coerced-plea motion could be adjudicated by a genuinely neutral judge rather than the very judge whose challenged conduct would become part of the motion.

Jones denied the requested relief.

I sought reconsideration.

Jones denied that too.

I formally objected.

Then, on September 11, I filed the actual NRS 176.165 proceeding.

At that moment, whatever argument had previously existed that the problem was anticipatory disappeared. The motion was real. The constitutional challenge was pending. Peterson’s own challenged conduct was expressly inside its factual and causal chain. And an October 5 hearing was approaching.

Yet Peterson still did not recuse herself.

That distinction matters because this controversy involves two different institutional failures at two different levels.

Peterson is the challenged judge whose alleged conduct is materially at issue and who has not stepped aside.

Jones is the district’s Chief Judge who, despite repeated notice, has thus far failed to accomplish the administrative reassignment necessary to ensure that Peterson does not adjudicate that challenge.

And Herndon is now the statewide judicial administrative officer being called upon to prevent the first two circumstances from culminating in Peterson exercising substantive authority over the October 5 proceeding.

On September 13, I formally notified Jones that the NRS 176.165 proceeding was now pending and demanded immediate administrative reassignment to a genuinely neutral judge with no prior involvement.

Still no completed reassignment.

So on September 16, I went over the district court’s head.

Straight to Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon.

HERNDON IS NOT BEING ASKED TO DECIDE MY CASE

This distinction matters just as much.

I am not asking Herndon to decide whether my plea was coerced.

I am not asking him to decide whether Rinetti or Peterson committed misconduct.

I am not asking him to make credibility findings.

I am not asking him to determine guilt or innocence.

And I am certainly not asking him to dictate how the NRS 176.165 motion should ultimately be decided.

I am asking Nevada’s highest judicial administrative officer to exercise his lawful authority and take immediate action before Peterson adjudicates a motion that materially challenges Peterson’s own conduct.

Article 6, Section 19(1) of the Nevada Constitution provides that the Chief Justice is the administrative head of the court system. My filing relies on Halverson v. Hardcastle, 123 Nev. 245, 260, 268, 163 P.3d 428, 439, 444-45 (2007), for the Nevada Supreme Court’s recognition of the Chief Justice’s statewide “superintending authority” over judicial administrative functions. It also invokes SCR 16(3), under which the Chief Justice may overrule a district chief judge’s administrative decision if it does not comport with proper administration of the court system.

Nevada precedent also demonstrates that administrative reassignment is not some radical invention.

In Goldman v. Bryan, the Nevada Supreme Court discussed an administrative order under Article 6, Section 19 that directed the Eighth Judicial District Court’s Chief Judge to reassign judicial business. The Court characterized that action as reapportioning the public’s judicial business in the interest of the administration of justice.

In other words:

There is an administrative problem.

Nevada has an administrative head.

Nevada law recognizes statewide administrative authority.

I have asked that authority to act.

And the reason action is required is not abstract. It is to prevent Jessica Peterson from exercising substantive judicial authority over a motion that materially challenges Jessica Peterson’s own conduct.

THEN THE COURT COULDN’T EVEN RECEIVE ITS OWN ELECTRONIC SERVICE PROPERLY

As if fighting through multiple levels of judicial administration merely to secure a neutral tribunal were not enough, another problem emerged.

Odyssey eService began repeatedly returning an “Error” for the Chief Judge’s Department 10 service contact.

So I notified Department 10.

Then I notified it again.

Then again.

Then again.

And on September 16, I sent a FIFTH NOTICE.

By then, the documented total had reached seven Odyssey service failures. Department 10 had been given screenshots, courtesy copies of the affected filings, six previously identified envelope numbers, and information from my own contact with Tyler Technologies. The seventh failed envelope was identified as 18720564.

Tyler Technologies had reportedly told me that someone from Department 10 needed to contact Tyler Technologies concerning the problem.

Yet after three days and four prior written notices:

Not even a one-sentence acknowledgment.

Think about what that means.

A self-represented criminal defendant identifies a malfunction affecting service upon the Chief Judge’s own department.

He documents it.

He supplies screenshots.

He sends courtesy copies so nobody can credibly claim ignorance of the underlying filings.

He identifies the affected filing envelopes.

He personally contacts the technology provider.

He relays what the provider says the court department needs to do.

And he repeatedly asks the Chief Judge’s department for the most basic administrative response imaginable:

Did you receive the filings, and are you fixing the problem?

Silence.

CHIEF JUDGE JONES’S OWN STANDARD

That silence becomes particularly conspicuous when compared with what Chief Judge Jones’s own Department X webpage tells lawyers appearing before her.

As reproduced in my fifth notice, the Department’s published “Courtroom Protocol” states:

“Attorneys are expected to maintain the highest ethical standards at all times” and are expected to comply with deadlines, be punctual, and remain civil to parties, witnesses, and court personnel.

Those are perfectly appropriate expectations.

But as I wrote in response:

“Professionalism, civility, punctuality, attention to deadlines, and accountability should not operate in only one direction.”

No, a courtroom-protocol statement does not itself create some legal requirement that chambers answer every email. I expressly said exactly that in my notice.

But that misses the larger point.

These were not unsolicited communications seeking an improper private conversation about the merits. The prosecutor and other recipients were copied. The communications repeatedly made clear that the issue was administrative.

And the subject matter was not trivial.

The filings being affected concerned an approaching constitutional proceeding in which Peterson’s own challenged conduct is materially at issue, Peterson has not recused herself, and Jones has not completed reassignment to a neutral judge.

After the fifth notice, the administrative record was straightforward:

Seven documented service failures.

Five written notices.

Multiple courtesy copies.

Specific envelope numbers.

Tyler Technologies contacted.

A specific reported Tyler instruction communicated to Department 10.

A written-response deadline that passed.

And silence.

The fifth notice therefore told Department 10 that its silence was no longer merely an issue of email etiquette. It had become part of the documented administration of an active criminal case involving a pending constitutional challenge and an October 5 hearing.

PETERSON, JONES, AND NOW HERNDON

The institutional chain is now impossible to misunderstand.

Peterson is the judge whose challenged conduct is materially embedded in my coerced-plea claim. She has not recused herself.

Jones is the Chief Judge who has been repeatedly asked to ensure that the pending NRS 176.165 motion is administratively reassigned before Peterson exercises substantive authority over it. That completed reassignment has not occurred.

Herndon is now the statewide administrative head of Nevada’s judiciary who has been formally asked to ensure that the district-level failure does not result in the very constitutional injury I have been trying to prevent.

That is why this escalation matters.

It is not about relieving Peterson of responsibility by shifting the story to Jones.

And it is not about relieving Jones of responsibility by shifting the story to Herndon.

Each occupies a different position in the chronology.

Peterson’s challenged conduct is part of the underlying coercion claim, yet she has not recused herself. That failure has consequences far beyond Peterson herself. It has forced other judicial officials into an escalating administrative controversy, but the burden has fallen most heavily on me. After already spending approximately two years litigating before Peterson, I should not have been required, after the December 3, 2025 plea that I contend was coerced, to expend this extraordinary amount of additional time and effort simply trying to ensure that Peterson does not adjudicate a motion materially challenging her own conduct.

Consider what that has required. I sought Peterson’s disqualification. I sought reconsideration. I filed the motion to withdraw the coerced plea. I separately placed the reassignment issue before Chief Judge Tierra Jones. When that still did not produce a neutral reassignment, I was forced to escalate the matter to Nevada’s highest judicial administrative officer, Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon. Along the way, I have had to prepare motions, notices, objections, supporting exhibits, emails, service documentation, and an extensive record simply to obtain what should have existed at the outset: a neutral judge to decide a constitutional challenge in which the presently assigned judge’s own conduct is materially at issue.

That burden is outrageous. Whatever ultimately happens on the merits of my motion, obtaining a neutral decision-maker should not itself require a second litigation campaign. Yet that is effectively what Peterson’s refusal to recuse has forced me to undertake. Every additional filing, every administrative escalation, and every additional hour required to prevent Peterson from adjudicating a challenge materially involving Peterson exists because the threshold problem remains unresolved.

Jones was not suddenly confronted with this problem in September. This matter has been squarely on Chief Judge Tierra Jones’s radar since July 13, 2026, when I filed my motion specifically seeking Peterson’s disqualification before Peterson could adjudicate the forthcoming motion challenging her own conduct. Jones had been Chief Judge for less than two weeks, but the issue placed before her could hardly have been clearer: I was trying to prevent Peterson from deciding a constitutional challenge in which Peterson herself would be a material part of the factual and causal record.

I contend Jones wrongly denied that motion. This was not a request for a favor, a courtesy, or special treatment. I had a constitutional right to a neutral tribunal. Period. I sought reconsideration and placed the problem before her again. Jones denied reconsideration. I then filed the very NRS 176.165 motion whose absence Jones had relied upon in refusing relief. I subsequently placed the need for immediate administrative reassignment before her yet again. Still, no completed neutral reassignment has occurred.

Jones therefore has no plausible claim that she lacked notice of the problem. She has had notice since July 13. The first two State of the Nation articles publicly exposed what I regard as the contradiction between the principles Jones publicly professed and the manner in which she was handling this case. Now the question has become even more serious. After repeated notice, repeated filings, reconsideration, the actual filing of the NRS 176.165 motion, and repeated demands for neutral reassignment, Jones still has not produced a completed neutral reassignment. The documented record now raises a more fundamental question: whether Jones is willing and able to exercise the administrative authority of the Chief Judge to accomplish the neutral reassignment that I contend the Constitution and Nevada law require before Peterson takes substantive action on the motion.

And just as Peterson cannot escape responsibility because the matter was escalated to Jones, Jones cannot escape responsibility because I have now been forced to escalate it to Chief Justice Douglas W. Herndon. Herndon’s involvement does not erase the responsibility of anyone below him. Peterson remains responsible for her own decision not to recuse from a proceeding materially challenging her own conduct. Jones remains responsible for the decisions she has made since this issue was placed squarely before her on July 13, and for the fact that no completed neutral reassignment has followed. And I remain the person forced to expend an extraordinary amount of additional time and effort simply trying to secure the neutral tribunal that I contend the Constitution required in the first place.

Herndon has now been asked to exercise statewide administrative authority before Peterson is permitted to act on the merits.

SO NOW CHIEF JUSTICE HERNDON HAS THE ADMINISTRATIVE QUESTION BEFORE HIM

My September 16 court filing formally placed Chief Justice Herndon on notice.

My fifth Department 10 communication later that day copied Chief Justice Herndon and the Clerk of the Nevada Supreme Court, along with Chief Deputy District Attorney Dena Rinetti, Department 8, attorney Michael Sanft, Alex Falconi of Our Nevada Judges, and Eighth Judicial District Court Staff Attorney Chricy Harris.

There should therefore be no ambiguity about what I am requesting.

My September 16 filing demands IMMEDIATE ACTION by Chief Justice Herndon, in his capacity as administrative head of the Nevada court system, to ensure that my September 11 NRS 176.165 motion is removed from Peterson and reassigned to a genuinely neutral district judge.

I requested from him a written confirmation of the completed reassignment NO LATER THAN WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2026.

Not an acknowledgment.

Not “we’re looking into it.”

Not another procedural circle.

Not October 5.

A completed reassignment.

My filing specifically states that a mere acknowledgment, statement that the matter is under review, or promise of later action does not constitute the completed reassignment requested.

And there is another important distinction.

I am not trying to select the replacement judge.

I am demanding a genuinely neutral judge with no prior involvement in the challenged conduct or prior disqualification proceedings. My filing specifically objects to reassignment to judges Joe Hardy, Jasmin Lilly-Spells, Carli Kierny, Mark Denton, Jerry Wiese, or Tierra Jones.

The objective is not a judge who will rule for me.

The objective is a judge who can lawfully decide the motion without being entangled in the conduct the motion asks the court to examine.

THIS IS WHAT “DUE PROCESS” HAS COME TO IN LAS VEGAS?

The phrase “due process” gets thrown around so frequently that people can forget what it is supposed to mean when an actual human being stands before an actual court.

Here, the immediate demand could hardly be simpler.

I have filed a motion asserting that my guilty plea was constitutionally involuntary.

I allege that Rinetti’s repeated procedurally unlawful instigation and Peterson’s corresponding repeated procedurally unlawful judicial action and acquiescence contributed to the escalating governmental pressure that ultimately coerced that plea.

Peterson’s own conduct is therefore materially at issue.

Peterson has not recused herself.

I sought relief from Chief Judge Jones.

Jones has not completed the necessary reassignment.

I have now escalated the matter to Chief Justice Herndon.

Herndon has been asked to use his statewide administrative authority to prevent Peterson from adjudicating the constitutional challenge to conduct in which Peterson herself allegedly participated.

How many levels of the Nevada judiciary should a citizen have to climb to obtain a neutral adjudicator?

Does it take a motion?

A motion for reconsideration?

A formal objection?

A new NRS 176.165 proceeding?

Another formal notice?

Five administrative emails?

Seven electronic-service failures?

A technology-support ticket?

A demand to the Chief Judge?

A formal filing directed to the Chief Justice?

Does it take an act of God to get basic constitutional due process at the Vegas Eighth Judicial District Court?

Because at some point, “the process” cannot itself become the obstacle to obtaining the constitutional protection the process supposedly exists to provide.

I am an honorably discharged veteran of both the United States Air Force and the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. I have spent my entire adult life believing that public institutions and the people entrusted with governmental authority are accountable to the law. Yet in my entire life, I have never encountered anything comparable to what I have experienced in this courthouse.

For more than seven years, I have fought to protect my name, my family, my reputation, and my innocence. What has made that experience even more disturbing is that, after the December 3, 2025 plea that I contend was coerced, I have been forced to undertake yet another extraordinary campaign simply to secure something as elementary as a neutral judge. I should not have to repeatedly demand that judges, prosecutors, and judicial administrators obey the constitutional and procedural limits governing their authority.

My military service does not entitle me to special treatment, and I am not asking for any. It does, however, make the experience particularly bitter. I served my country honorably. I am now asking its judicial officers for something far more basic: follow the Constitution, follow the law, respect due process, and ensure that the judge whose own challenged conduct is materially implicated in my coerced-plea claim does not adjudicate that claim herself. That should not be an extraordinary demand in an American courtroom.

THE CLOCK IS NOW RUNNING

Herndon has been asked to act by September 23.

The presently scheduled hearing is October 5.

There is therefore time to solve this administratively before Peterson exercises substantive authority over the motion and before the alleged constitutional injury I have spent months attempting to prevent occurs.

As my filing states:

“There is still time to prevent the asserted injury. There is no legitimate administrative reason to wait until October 5. A neutral tribunal is not relief on the merits. It is the lawful forum in which the merits can be decided.”

That sentence reduces this entire controversy to its essence.

I am not demanding that Nevada declare me right about the merits before a hearing.

I am demanding that Nevada provide a constitutionally proper forum in which those merits can be heard.

And responsibility does not disappear merely because the issue has now moved upward through the judicial administration.

Peterson remains responsible for her own decision whether to recuse from a proceeding materially challenging her own conduct. By refusing to step aside, she has now become a burden on everyone else, especially me, forcing an extraordinary expenditure of time and effort and requiring successive judicial officials to confront a problem that would not exist if Peterson had recused herself.

Jones remains the Chief Judge whose district-level administration has thus far not produced the completed neutral reassignment repeatedly demanded.

Herndon now has the statewide administrative problem squarely before him and has been expressly asked to ensure that Peterson does not exercise substantive authority over the motion.

The issue has therefore reached the top of Nevada’s judicial administrative structure.

The Nevada judiciary has until September 23 to provide written confirmation of the completed reassignment I demanded.

Not after Peterson acts.

Not at the October 5 hearing.

Not after another alleged constitutional injury has already occurred.

NOW.

The question is no longer whether the relevant judicial officials have been given notice.

The documented question is what each of them does after notice.

And the record will speak for itself.

Reference Eighth Judicial District Court case number C-19-343540-2

DIRECT LINK TO THE NOTICE FILED TO CHIEF JUSTICE DOUGLAS HERNDON:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CKzN3fCI5G-z2wO59e-JRG7LxtSTE6AZ/view?usp=sharing

LINK TO YOUTUBE CHANNEL “OUR NEVADA JUDGES” VIDEOS SHOWING JUDGE PETERSON VIOLATING THE US AND NEVADA CONSTITUTIONS, NEVADA REVISED STATUTES, NEVADA CODE OF JUDICIAL CONDUCT, NEVADA RULES OF CRIMINAL PRACTICE, AND OF OF COURSE HER OATH OF OFFICE:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsKMpjAPcB2vENMuRhH_nSceRUWIZaLoI