Between 1864 and 1944, Nevada executed about 50 convicted criminals for capital offenses.
Up to that time, none was as young as Floyd Loveless and none since was as young.
Loveless went to the gas chamber despite legal appeals on his behalf and letters and petitions begging judges, parole board members and Gov. Edward P. Carville for clemency.
Years later, Reno author Janice Oberding latched onto Loveless's story and wrote "Under a Cruel Moon: Floyd Loveless' Story," (Thunder Mountain Productions Press, $16.95 paperback*), an account of the young killer's life and death.
While researching another Nevada murder case, Oberding came across the story of Loveless and his 2-year struggle for a sentence reduction. The offender's youth and the state's determination to apply the death penalty to one so young surprised her.
Oberding slogged through swamps of old news stories in newspapers and on microfiche. One of Loveless's lawyers, who had kept materials relating to the case for years, handed Oberding's sister his case files. She traveled to Indiana for more research.
"I talked once to his stepmother," Oberding said. "She still had a lot of negative things to say" about Loveless.
"It was 40 years, but she put me in contact with his brother," she said.
A tough life
Loveless was an Indiana boy with a tough family life. Early in life, he took to petty crime, ending up in a boys' reformatory. Unhappy with the abusive treatment there, Loveless and another young offender, Dale Cline, escaped and took off for California in a stolen car, stealing and robbing for money.
By the time the duo reached Nevada, they were ready to part ways. In Elko, Loveless stole another car so he could drive on alone to California, but witnesses reported the crime.
By the time Loveless arrived in Carlin, Constable A. H. Berning was waiting for him on U.S. 40. Rather than return to Elko with the constable and risk being sent back to Indiana, Loveless shot Berning twice, drove off with the lawman in his car, then left the car and the constable in the desert.
Lawmen quickly apprehended Loveless; he was tried, convicted and sentenced to death despite being only 15 years old at the time of the crime.
Loveless's fate probably was sealed despite his age because he shot a well-liked lawman in a small town, Oberding said.
"If he had done the same thing in Reno, a different city, he might have gotten life (in prison) ... that happened, and he was an outsider. ... If he had been a local boy, it might have been different. He had all the strikes against him."
Appeals for mercy during the 2 years of hearings and motions and a new trial fell on deaf ears, and the state Supreme Court let the lower court ruling stand. Clergymen, judges, Loveless family members, Nevada prison inmates and others pleaded the young man's case with Gov. Carville and others, but in the end Loveless was executed in Nevada's gas chamber on Sept. 29, 1944 -- the youngest person before or since then to die under a Nevada state death sentence.
A surprise in researching the story, Oberding said, was how many times it seemed Loveless had a chance at having his death sentence commuted.
"You'd think that at the 2nd trial they're going to give him life -- a commutation," she said. "He came so close to having life rather than being executed, but every time, there was something against him. It was a surprise how many legal opportunities came along, but the door was slammed on every one of them."
With a youthful crime record behind him in Indiana, was Loveless a cold-blooded killer? Oberding doubts that was the case. "I think he panicked," she said.
The story of his abusive childhood and what effect those circumstances might have played on his later life: "Probably there were lots of others like him that didn't do what he did," Oberding said. "You pity him like someone who was destined not to have a very long or pleasant life."
In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for people younger than 18.
*Commercial link provided for information purposes only.
Source: Reno Gazette-Journal, August 15, 2010
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