Incompetent person cannot be tried or adjudged to punishment for public offense
Applied in 27 court decisions — leading case Riggins v. Nevada (1992)
Most recently applied in 141 Nev. Adv. Op. No. 25 - STATE v. DESAVIO (MATTHEW) (May 2025)
[1911 Cr
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
1. A person may not be tried or adjudged to punishment for a public offense while incompetent.
2. For the purposes of this section, “incompetent” means that the person does not have the present ability to:
(a) Understand the nature of the criminal charges against the person;
(b) Understand the nature and purpose of the court proceedings; or
(c) Aid and assist the person’s counsel in the defense at any time during the proceedings with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.
Official source: Nevada Legislature. Reproduced from public-domain Nevada statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.