Longtime Las Vegas Justice of the Peace Joe M. Bonaventure is seeking a fourth term in Justice Court Dept. 9. He captured 49.3% of the vote in the June three-way primary election. Danielle Piper Chio, a Clark County prosecutor, came in second with 31.1%.
Bonaventure, who raised $37,530 through June and spent $25,905, is losing the money game to his opponent. Chio reports raising $184,780 through June and spending $123,345.
Bonaventure says he rejects the notion that the most qualified candidate receives the most money in contributions.
“I have handled every type of case in Justice Court,” he says. “I run on experience.”
Bonaventure won his first election in 2004, just three years after graduating from UNLV’s Boyd Law School.
“I’ve been a judge for over 17 years now,” he says, adding he’s “amazed when I say it out loud.”
His father, District Court Judge Joe Bonaventure, presided over high-profile cases in Clark County, including the trial of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish, who were convicted in 2000 of murdering casino heir Ted Binion.
Bonaventure presides over criminal cases, but has split his caseload between criminal and civil matters, including small claims and evictions. He says he established the countywide Criminal Justice Coordinating Council and had a “substantial amount to do with establishing an initial appearance court” which operates daily, and ensures defendants’ timely appearances before a judge, rather than a paper review of their case.
“We now have two sessions for probable cause reviews,” he says. “Normally the defendants appear in court actually in front of a judge within 12 to 24 hours” of arrest.
Bonaventure says the Justice Court has been largely unaffected by modest legislative reforms to the criminal justice system. He says the court had already adopted the practice of requiring the prosecution to prove a defendant is a danger to the community before the Valdez-Jimenez ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court in 2020 officially shifted the burden from defense to prosecution, in an effort to ensure pretrial defendants do not remain incarcerated simply because they can’t afford bail.
Results, Bonaventure says “have been overwhelmingly positive,” though he did not have data available. “The percentage of individuals who are complying with conditions of release that are actually making their court appearances and not reoffending is a significant number. So it does appear to be working.”
Bonaventure ran unopposed in 2010, and defeated two opponents in the primary in 2016. “I won overwhelmingly,” he says. “I got nearly 60% of the vote.”
He is endorsed by Culinary Local 226, SEIU Nevada, the AFL-CIO of Nevada, Clark County Firefighters, Nevada NOW, and others.
Chio, who is making her first bid for public office, did not respond to requests for an interview.
“Volunteer work inspired me to go to law school, to be a voice for victims of violent crime,” says Chio’s website. A campaign video features an endorsement from fellow prosecutor and Democratic state Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro.
She is also endorsed by the Las Vegas Police Protective Association, Laborers International 872, the Clark County Prosecutors Association, Hispanics in Politics, and a variety of other unions and law enforcement associations.
Chio attended the University of Pacific, McGeorge School of Law. She became a prosecutor for the City of Las Vegas in 2003. She moved to the Clark County District Attorney’s office in 2005, where she joined the Special Victim’s Unit in 2009, prosecuting sexual assault cases, and was promoted in 2012 to team chief of the gang unit.
“My work at the Gang Unit also included finding alternatives to incarceration,” says her website.
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