[chris]

Shaunna Leann Dodd was convicted of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon in October 2013 for shooting her husband, Brad Dodd, in Washoe Valley, Nevada. A Washoe County jury returned the verdict in the Second Judicial District Court, with Judge David A. Hardy presiding. On November 26, 2013, she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus a consecutive weapon enhancement, reported as 20 years. The Nevada Department of Corrections lists the enhancement as 8 to 20 years.

Shaunna Dodd, 31, and Brad Dodd, 37, lived in the 3900 block of Pershing Lane in Washoe Valley, in Washoe County. Washoe County Sheriff's Office deputies were dispatched to the home at about 12:35 a.m. on December 29, 2012, to a report of trouble, unknown. They found Brad Dodd dead inside. Shaunna Dodd had called 911 and said intruders had entered the house, robbed her and shot her husband. An autopsy confirmed that he died of gunfire.

The sheriff's office Special Operations and Investigations Division named Shaunna Dodd a suspect after interviews and a review of the evidence. She was arrested on January 3, 2013, and booked into the Washoe County jail on one count of open murder, held without bail. Detectives concluded that she shot her husband and discarded the gun. Witnesses said she had wanted to kill him for several months, had tried to hire killers and had tried to poison him herself. She later told a friend that she "snapped." The defense pointed to another man as an alternative suspect; the state called him to testify at trial, and he was cross-examined about inconsistencies in his alibi.

In the police interview, Shaunna Dodd describes the evening to detectives, including taking the children to a relative's house and returning home. Detectives question her on the timeline. Near the end, they ask about a gun kept in a case under the bed and whether it was the only gun in the house. No confession to detectives is reported.

The Nevada Supreme Court affirmed the conviction on December 11, 2014. It agreed that the trial court erred by not giving a limiting instruction immediately before testimony about her prior bad acts, but found the error did not affect the verdict, given the instructions that were given and what it called overwhelming direct evidence. It upheld the admission of testimony about an extramarital sexual encounter as relevant to motive, and rejected her claims that the judge improperly relied on her apparent lack of remorse and that the sentence shocked the conscience.

On June 7, 2021, the Nevada Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of her state habeas petitions, which argued that trial counsel was ineffective, including for not calling a pathologist and not investigating the alternative suspect further. A federal habeas corpus petition she filed in 2021 was later denied by the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, which also denied a certificate of appealability. As of November 1, 2026, the Nevada Department of Corrections lists her at Florence McClure Women's Correctional Center.

[chris]

Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.