Deputy public defenders challenge incumbent Sciscento for LV Justice Court seat  

The primary race for Las Vegas Justice Court Dept. 2, which handles criminal matters, features two Clark County public defenders vying to unseat Judge Joseph Sciscento. 

Ava Bravo, formerly known as Karen Schatzle, is a woman of mystery and contradiction.  

Bravo says she changed her name for a variety of reasons. “I know that it’s been portrayed as me changing my name to be able to have a better name to run for office. But that is not the case,” she said in an interview with the Current.

Bravo says in Las Vegas she received “pushback working as a defense attorney” and “felt like starting over, and not having information readily available that I was a career prosecutor would instill more confidence in my clients and provide me an opportunity to get to know people and have them assess me for who I am, and not as a label.”

Despite that, the public defender identifies herself on her judicial questionnaire as a career prosecutor.  

Bravo says she earned her law degree in 1992 from Western State College of Law, and worked for the Orange County District Attorney from 1992 to 2019, where she prosecuted violent felonies and worked in the special victims unit, the career criminals unit, and on insurance fraud.  

In 2017, she sued her boss, District Attorney Anthony Rackauckas, and sought $5 million in damages, alleging Rackauckas retaliated against her for challenging a judge who was censured for sexual conduct in his chambers. Bravo, then Schatzle, lost the election but says she prevailed in the lawsuit against her boss.    

“It’s true that I was punished for running against the judge who had been censured,“ she said, adding she was not awarded damages. “I won the suit.” 

However, court documents reveal a jury returned a unanimous special verdict in Rackauckas’ favor, acknowledging Schatzle endured “an adverse employment action” but not as a result of her judicial campaign. Rackauckas and Orange County had “judgment entered in their favor” as well as the opportunity to recover their costs, according to the order. 

Bravo still maintains she won. 

Bravo said she moved to Las Vegas full time five years ago, but also worked for four years in Orange County after her lawsuit ended in 2019. However, her questionnaire says she left the D.A.’s office in 2019 and worked at the Children’s Law Center until 2021. It does not list her current employment with Clark County. 

Her judicial questionnaire says she has “the legal acumen to make informed, fair decisions. She says “as a criminal defense attorney representing indigent clients, I ensure that marginalized individuals receive a fair defense regardless of their financial circumstances.’ 

Although she’s new to living full time in Las Vegas, she says she’s maintained a long-distance relationship for 20 years with her husband, who she says lives in Las Vegas, but declined to identify.  

Bravo, under her previous name, is a defendant in litigation filed last month involving the deed to her residence. She told the Current she’s unaware of the suit and would inquire with her husband. The plaintiff, Richard Costello, who she says is her husband’s business partner, filed a lis pendens, a notification that the property is the subject of litigation, against the property Bravo lists in campaign documents as her residence.  Bravo says she doesn’t “have any lis pendens on any of my properties and I have several.”

Her co-defendant in the suit, Peter Anello, was once fined by the Nevada Real Estate Division for coaching renters of an illegal vacation rental party house that he managed on how to deceive regulatory officials about the length of the lease, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. 

Bravo says there are “a variety of reasons” she chose to run against Sciscento, “not all of which I’m willing to share with you. One is that I received phone calls and people asked me to run against this judge.” She says she did not inquire as to why the callers wanted her to run. She says she has her own opinion but declined to share it, adding she’s “not going to engage in unethical behavior as he has.” 

Bravo alleges Sciscento “encouraged another public defender to run against me in order to split the female vote.” 

A candidate who wins 50% plus one vote in the primary wins the seat without going to the general election. 

‘Public defenders decided to do it’

Deputy public defender Kristal Bradford is also running in Dept. 2  but has not responded to requests for an interview. Bradford attended UCLA and Western State College of Law. She has held the position of Chief Public Defender since 2018, according to her judicial questionnaire.

Bradford writes in her questionnaire that she’s running for judge because she “can look at every case independently, and not let any personal biases prevent me from being fair and giving a just ruling. As a judge, I will make sure everyone is seen, regardless of their background or socio-economic status.”

Sciscento, who was appointed to Dept. 2 in 2009, elected the following year and re-elected twice, says he did not encourage Bradford to run. 

“The public defenders decided to do it,” he says. “It was, I guess, to help me because incumbents do better in primaries. But I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t ask them. I didn’t contact them.”

Sciscento says he doesn’t have firsthand knowledge, but believes Bradford knew or knew of Bravo, then Schatzle, when the two practiced in California. 

“Kristal apparently was not happy with the idea of her (Bravo) becoming a judge. I think that’s why the public defenders got together and decided to do this,” he said.

Bravo says she’s read a judicial discipline complaint filed by Dr. Robert Medoff, a member of the Veterans in Politics, against Sciscento. “I was just like, ‘wow, that a sitting judge would do this.’ I was shocked to tell you the truth.” She declined to elaborate. 

Medoff says he based his complaint on the word of three attorneys who told him while having lunch that Bradford is in the race to split the female vote. He says he never inquired with either Sciscento or Bradford before filing the ethics complaint.

Medoff acknowledges judicial ethics complaints are supposed to be confidential. Sciscento says he’s aware of talk of a complaint but  has not been contacted by the Judicial Discipline Commission. 

Sciscento has been in Las Vegas since 1991. He worked with veteran attorney Dominic Gentile, former Judge Gene Porter, and former Judge Nancy Saitta. In 2009, he and former Justice of the Peace Melanie Tobiasson were appointed out of 29 applicants to two open seats on the Justice Court. 

“While on the bench. I’ve been among the highest rated judges in Justice Court,” he says. In 2019, the most recent Judging the Judges attorney survey published by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sciscento had an 86% retention rate. He’s endorsed by the Clark County Prosecutors Association, Clark County Firefighters, the Police Protective Association, Nevada NOW PAC, and others. 

Sciscento says he and other judges are “pushing back” against pretrial risk assessments required since the 2020 Nevada Supreme Court ruling that requires individualized bail hearings in place of state-imposed standards.  

“We aren’t getting enough information,” Sciscento said, noting that a defendant who receives a low risk assessment because they’ve had no convictions in the past decade may have done so because they were incarcerated. “We’re saying ‘if you want us to make decisions on reduction of bail or releasing, we need more information than you’re giving us.’ We can’t just blindly look at the number.” Sciscento says administrative tweaks to the system can result in more informative risk assessments. 

Sciscento says remote hearings, a remnant of the pandemic, are valuable but “slow things down” by requiring procedures not necessary when parties are in person, such as ensuring the person on the other end of the camera or phone is the defendant. 

“The one thing I don’t like about it is the attorneys will start asking the clients questions about offers. I’m like, ‘no, no, no, no. Go to another room. You have their phone number. I’ll trail the case to the end.’ It’s very important that we maintain the attorney client privilege,” he says. 

Sciscento says several years ago he initiated a court for defendants, often individuals experiencing homelessness, who have been ordered out of the resort corridor for committing misdemeanor offenses.  

“The numbers were so great that we were slowing down preliminary hearings and trials were being set further out,” he says, adding the dedicated court session has made it more manageable. He’s also working to get some of the cited individuals into specialty programs in order to get them mental health or substance abuse treatment.  

Sciscento says he’s hopeful a resort industry campus designed to provide housing and other service for homeless individuals will materialize. Legislation authorizing matching public public funding for the program was passed by state lawmakers last year.

“We all know we’ve had pie in the sky things before, but hopefully it happens,” he says. 

Early voting in the primary election begins May 25 and runs through June 7. Election day is June 11.