A candidate running for Clark County public administrator has a checkered criminal history and recently has been accused of threatening a man in Henderson.
Marlin “M.J.” Ivy, one of six candidates running for the office, also has ties to Robert Telles, who was the county’s public administrator when he fatally stabbed Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German in 2022.
According to court records obtained by the Review-Journal, Ivy was initially convicted in 2014 of felony battery with a deadly weapon. A jury found Ivy guilty of hitting an employee of a pornographic video rental store with his car, but the case was overturned by the Nevada Court of Appeals in 2015.
At the time of the trial, Ivy was serving time in prison for two attempted robbery convictions, court records show. More recently, a man filed a police report in March alleging that Ivy threatened to break his wrists.
Ivy, 54, repeatedly declined to answer direct questions about his criminal history in a phone call with the Review-Journal on Tuesday. He said he had the court documents sealed.
“Once the record was sealed, I got a job here, I got a job somewhere else,” Ivy said. “I get jobs because my record is sealed. For a reason.”
Ivy also denied that he made the threatening phone call that was reported to the Henderson Police Department.
He has spent several years advertising himself as a pastor on social media, while doing brief stints in local government positions.
Ivy also has publicly stated he was friends with Telles before German’s murder. Prosecutors have said Telles killed the investigative reporter over articles about his conduct as public administrator.
Telles and Ivy had campaigned together months earlier when Ivy ran unsuccessfully for the Nevada Board of Regents.
“Come join us Easter Weekend for our kickoff and campaign fundraiser with my friend, Rob Telles!!!! We are asking for suggested donations of $10-$100,” reads a post on Ivy’s Board of Regents campaign Facebook page from March 23, 2022.
Ivy came in last in the Board of Regents race during the 2022 primary election, when he received 5.8 percent of the vote.
He said he is no longer friends with Telles, who is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
About a month after Ivy began campaigning for the current public administrator race, a man filed a report with the Henderson Police Department alleging that Ivy threatened him during a phone call. A spokesperson for the department said police closed the case because the man who reported the call, Joebeck Werly, did not want to press charges.
“When I see you, and I will see you, I will break your hands. And I promise you on God’s mighty, I will break your wrists, and I will break your hands. You are f—-ed,” a man’s voice is heard saying on a video recording of the phone call released by Henderson police.
Werly told police that he received the call from Ivy, “a local political candidate,” around Feb. 24, an officer wrote in the report. Werly, who told police he puts up campaign signs for candidates, alleged that Ivy accused him of sabotaging Ivy’s signs.
The phone call lasted about a minute before the caller hung up. Werly declined to comment on the report.
“Here’s my comment to a closed case: I have no clue what they’re talking about,” Ivy told the Review-Journal.
Sealed records
It’s unclear what happened to Ivy’s battery case after the Nevada Court of Appeals sent it back to District Court in 2015. All records of Ivy’s convictions are hidden from public view in District Court databases.
Transcripts of the 2014 trial reveal that Ivy was accused of backing into a man after getting into an argument with him and several other employees over late rental fees at the Rancho Adult Entertainment store.
During the argument inside the store, Ivy was holding a patch that resembled a police badge, according to court transcripts. When an employee asked for his badge number, Ivy listed several digits.
He was never charged with impersonating an officer. The Court of Appeals overturned the battery conviction after finding that prosecutors should not have told the jury about the patch.
Nevada Department of Corrections records show he spent time in prison on the two attempted robbery convictions.
During his sentencing hearing in the battery case, Ivy told a judge that the attempted robbery convictions involved cellphones.
“They were a snatch,” Ivy told the judge, according to court transcripts. “So technically under the law if you take a cellphone out of a person’s hand that is considered robbery.”
The Nevada Criminal History Repository has no records of convictions for Ivy.
Defense attorney Josh Tomsheck, who works with clients to seal their criminal records, said someone can petition a judge to seal records of their criminal history once their case has been closed. If the judge grants the sealing, the defendant will have to notify each of the agencies that may have records of the criminal case.
People with Category B felonies, which include attempted robbery and battery, must wait five years after the case has been closed to petition for their record to be sealed. Category A felonies, which include violent crimes, require a waiting period of 10 years. Some convictions, such as crimes against children and sexual offenses, cannot be sealed in Nevada.
When someone has their criminal record sealed, they can legally tell Nevada officials that the crime never happened, Tomsheck said.
Part-time employment
Ivy presents a charismatic version of himself to the public. He emphasizes his military history with the Air Force. He says he’s a part-time pastor for his own church — Kinship Community Church — that advertised virtual services on Facebook.
The organization’s business entity status is listed as “revoked” on the Nevada secretary of state’s website, and the church’s website said it was disabled as of Tuesday.
Ivy also has positioned himself as a candidate with first-hand experience working in the public administrator’s office. His campaign website says he was a deputy public administrator.
A Clark County spokeswoman said he spent 76 hours over seven weeks working for the office as a part-time public administrator and investigator.
Ivy started on Aug. 22, 2022, after Telles lost a primary race to maintain his job as public administrator but before his term had officially ended. Telles murdered German in early September 2022 and was arrested days later.
Ivy left his part-time role at the office on Oct. 13, 2022.
When asked about the circumstances of Ivy leaving the office, county spokesperson Jennifer Cooper said that “as a part-time employee, his services were no longer needed.”
Michael Murphy, who is running for public administrator as a Republican, was helping to oversee the office as a consultant at the time Ivy started working there.
Murphy told the Review-Journal that he was not involved in any hiring decisions and declined to comment further for this article.
Representing himself
The 2014 battery trial took place over several days. Ivy represented himself and sometimes spoke about himself in the third person when addressing the jury, according to court transcripts.
Ivy’s overturned battery conviction dates back to the night of Jan. 24, 2013, when a manager at the now-closed Rancho Adult Entertainment store called 911 to report a customer who was refusing to leave, according to police documents included in the court records.
Ivy had tried to rent videos under a woman’s membership card, according to court records. Employees told him that he could not rent videos because he had his own late fees, according to court records.
Court records show that the store had reported Ivy to a collections agency over $253 he owed for pornographic video rentals.
The business’s night manager testified that she had seen Ivy in the store before. She said Ivy began to yell at her and continued to argue when another manager got involved and called 911.
A 911 dispatcher noted in police records that someone was “being very uncooperative” in the background of the call and was arguing with the employee who was making the report.
The dispatcher also noted that the caller said the uncooperative man was “carrying metro police badge.”
Ivy told the jury he did not claim to be a police officer while at the store, according to court transcripts.
While the manager was still on the phone with 911, Ivy left the business to get into his Nissan Maxima, according to court records. That manager and another employee, Michael Studnicka, followed Ivy out of the store.
Studnicka testified that he walked behind Ivy’s car to write down the license plate number and “have him trespassed” from the store. He was standing behind the car when Ivy backed up, hitting Studnicka before driving away, he testified.
Studnicka told the jury he suffered from bruised ribs from being hit.
In his closing arguments, Ivy questioned the reliability of the witnesses and pointed to a lack of video evidence of Studnicka being hit by a car. A police officer testified that he failed to obtain the video before the store’s surveillance system deleted it.
Ivy argued that he did not intentionally hit Studnicka. He told the jury he was instead focused on the manager, Brian Cooperman, who Ivy said was pointing a weapon at him.
Cooperman testified that he pulled a Taser out of his pocket only after Ivy backed up into Studnicka.
Attempts to reach Studnicka and Cooperman were not successful.
Ivy was arrested several months after the incident, on May 26, 2013, at the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of battery with a deadly weapon, according to an arrest report.
During the court proceedings, prosecutors told a judge that Ivy was on probation when he was accused of battery and that he was in prison on other charges when he stood trial, according to the trial transcripts.
Ivy did not testify in his own defense during the trial. He said in closing arguments that he was “sarcastic and flippant” when the employees called 911, and he argued that his remarks only made him guilty of “being a jerk,” according to trial transcripts.
“Again, Mr. Ivy’s claimed not to be an angel,” Ivy argued, referring to himself in the third person. “He can be a jerk; but he doesn’t claim to commit a crime.”
Prosecutor Christopher Hamner argued that Ivy intentionally hit Studnicka after he “let his emotions get the best of him.”
“He escalated a situation,” Hamner said during closing arguments. “He made it worse and worse and worse, and when he was left with no way out, he runs over and hits the one person who’s taking down information that can identify him.”
Hamner is now a chief deputy district attorney who prosecutes homicides and was one of the two prosecutors who tried the case against Telles. He declined to comment for this story.
After about three hours of deliberations, the jury found Ivy guilty of the felony battery charge.
Criminal history
Prosecutor Charles Thoman laid out Ivy’s criminal history during a 2014 sentencing hearing, citing a presentence investigation report.
According to court transcripts of the hearing, Thoman said Ivy was charged in 1998 with assault on a law enforcement officer and was convicted of a misdemeanor offense. In 2005, Ivy faced a felony battery charge that he pleaded down to misdemeanor battery, the prosecutor said.
In 2011, Ivy was convicted of disturbing the peace in a case that originated from a domestic battery charge, Thoman said. And that same year, Ivy pleaded guilty to another domestic battery charge and was convicted of two attempted robbery charges, the prosecutor said.
“He was placed on probation, ultimately violated twice on each case and ultimately revoked in those cases to which he’s currently serving a sentence,” Thoman told the judge.
The Review-Journal was unable to locate additional records of the 1998 charge, the misdemeanor battery conviction, the disturbing the peace conviction or the domestic battery plea.
Thoman was harsh in his assessment of Ivy during the 2014 hearing.
“This individual has no respect for the laws,” Thoman said, according to court transcripts. “He has no respect for what’s required of him on probation. He has no respect for his fellow citizens in this community.”
During his sentencing hearing, Ivy told the judge he had been on probation, and he acknowledged facing a domestic violence charge but denied he had committed the offense.
“There was a charge of battery, of domestic violence that was beaten,” Ivy said, according to the transcripts. “The person did not tell the truth. They were using the system against me and I was placed on probation.”
Ivy said he had been “working in the community” and had the support of his family.
The judge sentenced Ivy to a maximum of eight years in prison, with parole eligibility after two years. The sentence was set to run at the same time as Ivy’s sentence in two other cases, according to court transcripts.
Department of Corrections records show that Ivy spent time in prison on two attempted robbery convictions. He was sentenced to between one year, seven months and four years for one count, and between one year, four months and six years on the other count, according to the records. He appeared to be serving those sentences concurrently.
Records indicate that Ivy was discharged on one of the attempted robbery counts and that the other count is “inactive.”
The prison records indicate that Ivy had no prior felony convictions.
Ivy appealed the battery conviction to the Nevada Supreme Court a month after he was sentenced, and the case was ultimately heard by the Nevada Court of Appeals, records show.
The appeals court reversed his conviction and sent the case back to District Court for a new trial in November 2015 because of the police patch testimony admitted by prosecutors, according to an order signed by Judges Michael Gibbons, Jerome Tao and Abbi Silver.
“Because admission of the police patch served to portray Ivy as a generally bad person, it was prejudicial and damaging to Ivy’s character, and, critical, could easily have swayed the jury on the central question of Ivy’s knowledge of Studnicka’s presence behind his car,” the judges wrote.
Public administrator race
Ivy is one of three Democrats vying for a chance at public administrator in the June primary. Three Republicans also are running. Voters will decide between the front-runner for each party during the November election.
The other Democrats running are Stephanie Itkin-Goodman, who works for the Nevada attorney general’s office, and real estate agent Edgar Velazquez.
Velazquez’s license shows he works with Compass Realty & Management, a real estate firm with ties to many of the homes sold in probate court. The firm also was caught up in a feud with Telles that dated back to his time as public administrator.
The Republican candidates for public administrator include Mark Sprinkle, who resells items online through Sprinkle Estate Sales, real estate agent Donald Salazar and Murphy.
Salazar also works with Compass Realty & Management, according to his real estate license.
To voters, Ivy has promoted his long resume and experience. He has served on Nevada State University’s department of education community board and the Clark County School District’s community policing board, guns and safety committee, and diversity and equity task force, according to his campaign website.
For just over three months in 2023, Ivy was the communications and engagement director for Jefferson County Public Libraries in Colorado. A spokesperson for the agency said she could not say why he left the position.
After Ivy left his job with the public administrator’s office in 2022, he spent about two weeks in a temporary role as a part-time assistant with the Clark County Election Department, a county spokesperson said.
In his interview with the Review-Journal, Ivy asked why he was being questioned about his past and suggested he was being targeted because he’s a Black man.
“You do not get to print what you want, just because you seem to have, air quote, evidence,” Ivy said. “It’s not evidence.”
Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240. Newberg is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.
