NRS § 200.575 – “Stalking” – Nevada Law & Penalties

NRS § 200.575 is the Nevada law that prohibits stalking, defined as willful conduct that causes another person reasonably to feel frightened or intimidated. Classic examples are following someone on the street or phoning someone repeatedly against the person’s wishes.

The penalties turn on whether the conviction is for stalking or aggravated stalking, which is stalking plus a threat to do major physical harm to the victim. The following table summarizes the punishments.

NRS 200.575 Crime	Nevada Sentence (generally)
Stalking	Misdemeanor: Up to 6 months in jail and/or $1,000 in fines.
Aggravated stalking	Category B felony: 2 to 15 years in Nevada State Prison and up to $5,000 in fines.

The language of the statute reads as follows:

A person who, without lawful authority, willfully or maliciously engages in a course of conduct directed towards a victim that would cause a reasonable person under similar circumstances to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, harassed or fearful for his or her immediate safety or the immediate safety of a family or household member, and that actually causes the victim to feel terrorized, frightened, intimidated, harassed or fearful for his or her immediate safety or the immediate safety of a family or household member, commits the crime of stalking.

On this page our Las Vegas criminal defense attorneys discuss the following stalking topics:

• 1. Elements
• 2. Penalties
• 3. Restraining Orders
• 4. Losing Firearm Rights
• 5. Defenses
• 6. Record Seals
• 7. Immigration Consequences
• 8. Stalking vs. Harassment
• 9. Related Offenses
• Additional Resources

1. Elements

Stalking is deliberately causing another person to reasonably feel frightened, terrorized, or fearful for the immediate safety of themselves, their family or housemates.

Stalking is usually not just one event but rather a pattern or course of conduct over time that makes the victim feel scared.

Examples of stalking behavior may include:

• following someone on the street or on the road for several blocks,
• loitering outside a person’s home or office,
• phoning someone frequently or leaving several voicemails,
• repeatedly showing up unexpectedly,
• vandalizing/defacing a person’s property,
• communicating with the person’s colleagues, family, and friends for no valid reason, or
• other unwanted and uninvited communications

Even seemingly harmless gestures such as sending gifts or leaving flowers at one’s front door can qualify as stalking if it is done excessively or if the victim told the giver to stay away.

Note that you may be convicted of stalking even if you did not mean to cause fear. What matters is that the victim reasonably construed your conduct as terrorizing or harassing.¹

Aggravated Stalking

Aggravated stalking is intentionally threatening the victim with death or substantial bodily harm. The threat does not need to be verbal: It can be conveyed through body language or other actions that make the victim fear for their safety.²

Examples of aggravated stalking include:

• following someone on the street or on the road while visibly brandishing a gun
• phoning someone frequently to say, “You’re dead the next time I see you”
• repeatedly showing up unexpectedly and threatening to beat up the victim

Cyber-Stalking

Cyber-stalking has three elements:

1. You commit the crime of stalking;
2. The stalking is done using the internet, email, text messaging, or similar means of communication; and
3. You use these electronic means to publish or distribute information in a manner that substantially increases the risk of harm or violence to the victim.³

The following hypothetical situations may qualify as cyber-stalking:

• posting Craigslist messages with the victim’s address and inviting people to come over for rough sex, and sending the victim links to those Craigslist ads
• posting untrue, incendiary information about the victim on Facebook meant to incite people to seek them out and harass them, and sending the victim links to those Facebook posts
• emailing the victim’s abusive ex-boyfriend the victim’s current address, and forwarding that email to the victim

2. Penalties

The punishment for stalking in Nevada turns on your criminal history, whether it involved the internet, and if you made a serious threat. These punishments are spelled out in the below table:⁴

Nevada Stalking Offense	Penalties
First offense	Misdemeanor (when the victim is at least 16): Up to 6 months in jail and/or $1,000. Gross misdemeanor (when the victim is under 16, and you are at least 5 years older): Up to 364 days in jail and/or $2,000.
Second offense	Gross misdemeanor (when the victim is at least 16): Up to 364 days in jail and/or $2,000. Category C felony (when the victim is under 16, and you are at least 5 years older): 2 to 5 years in prison and up to $5,000.
Subsequent offense	Category C felony (when the victim is at least 16): 1 to 5 years in prison, and up to $5,000. Category B felony (when the victim is under 16, and you are at least 5 years older): 2 to 15 years in prison and up to $5,000.
Cyberstalking	Category C felony: 1 to 5 years in prison and up to $10,000.
Aggravated stalking	Category B felony: 2 to 15 years in prison and up to $5,000.

The judge may also order psychological counseling and issue a protective order (discussed in the next section). Note that the judge can grant probation in lieu of incarceration.

Plea Bargains

Depending on the case, the D.A. may agree to reduce a first-time stalking charge to a lesser offense such as disorderly conduct in Nevada (CCO 12.33.010). They are both misdemeanors with the same penalties, but disorderly conduct carries less of a social stigma.⁵

3. Restraining Orders

Depending on the stalking case, a judge may issue a restraining order requiring you (the “adverse party”) to stay away from the “victim” for a predetermined length of time.

The penalty for violating a restraining order turns on the type of order, as the following table shows:⁶

Nevada Retraining Order Violation	Penalties for Violating the Restraining Order
Temporary protective order (TPO), which typically lasts for 45 days	Gross misdemeanor: Up to 364 days in jail and/or up to $2,000 in fines
Extended protective order (EPO), which may last a full year	Category C felony: 1 to 5 years in prison and up to $10,000 in fines

4. Losing Firearm Rights

You may lose your guns in Nevada if the following three conditions are true:

1. You get convicted of stalking;
2. You and the victim are family, (ex)partners, or co-parents; and
3. The victim has an ongoing, reasonable fear of physical harm.

In this situation, the judge will order you to permanently surrender your firearms and forbid you from possessing any more. Violating this order is a category B felony, carrying:

• 1 to 6 years in prison, and
• up to $5,000 in fines.⁷

5. Defenses

Here at Las Vegas Defense Group, we have represented literally thousands of people charged with stalking. In our experience, the following five defenses have proven very effective with judges and prosecutors.

1. You were falsely accused. Prosecutors realize that many of the stalking cases they get are the products of false allegations. We can often find evidence of the accusers’ motivation to lie in their text messages and other recorded communications.
2. You were misidentified. Sometimes victims wrongly presume they know the identity of the person stalking them. Typical evidence we rely on includes video surveillance, photographs, audio recordings, eyewitness accounts, handwriting samples, DNA samples, and alibis.
3. Your behavior was not stalking. Even if the “victim” was genuinely terrified, you committed no crime if you did not willfully engage in behavior that would intimidate a reasonable person. If we can show the D.A. that no judge or jury would consider your actions to be stalking, the charge should be dropped.
4. There was no threat of death or severe bodily harm. A felony charge of aggravated stalking can be reduced to misdemeanor stalking if the D.A. has insufficient evidence to prove you threatened the victim with serious injury or death. For example, threatening to commit suicide if the victim keeps ignoring you is not aggravated stalking because you are just threatening to harm yourself, not them.
5. You are protected by the First Amendment. Exercising your free speech may annoy some people, but it does not rise to the level of stalking.

Example: Ronny is a member of a casino dealer union that is picketing outside a casino to rally for higher wages. Whenever casino executives enter or leave the hotel, Ronny screams accusations at them. Even though Ronny’s actions intimidate the executives, it is still a peaceful protest protected by the First Amendment‘s guarantee of free speech and assembly.

Note that the First Amendment also protects professional journalists from stalking charges, such as when they phone a person for comment or hound a witness on the street.

6. Record Seals

The waiting period to pursue a criminal record seal in Nevada depends on the stalking charge, as the following table shows:⁸

Nevada Stalking Offense	Record Seal Waiting Time
Misdemeanor	2 years after the case ends
Gross misdemeanor	2 years after the case ends
Category C felony	5 years after the case ends
Category B felony	5 or 10 years after the case ends, depending on whether Nevada law considers aggravated stalking to be a “felony crime of violence”
Dismissal (no conviction)	No waiting period

7. Immigration Consequences

Stalking is a deportable offense under federal law.⁹ Therefore, any visa- or green card-holder who gets convicted of violating NRS 200.575 may be thrown out of the U.S.

Aliens facing stalking charges should retain counsel to try to get their case reduced to a non-removable crime.

8. Stalking vs. Harassment

Harassment (NRS 200.571) is threatening to harm another person’s body, mental health, or property. By contrast, stalking is acting in such a way that causes another person to feel frightened.

Harassment and stalking are similar in that the effect of both crimes is to intimidate the victim. It is common to face prosecution for both crimes in the same case.¹⁰

9. Related Offenses

• Nevada’s “Peeping Tom” law (NRS 200.603)
• Capturing the image of a private area (NRS 200.604)
• Battery domestic violence (NRS 200.485)
• Sexual harassment

Additional Resources

If you are a stalking victim, refer to the following:

• Stalking – Ways to get help provided by the Office on Violence against Women (DOJ).
• What is Stalking? – Overview by SPARC (Stalking Prevention, Awareness, & Resource Center).
• Stalking – Information and ways to get help, provided by RAINN (Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network).
• Stalking – List of organizations that can help victims compiled by Victim Connect Resource Center.
• Fast Facts: Preventing Stalking – Tips by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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Legal References