Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt added eight years to the minimum 20-year sentence due to Telles’s use of a deadly weapon, lying in wait, and the old age of the reporter. In August, a jury found Telles guilty of murdering Las Vegas Review-Journal reporter Jeff German.

At the time of the murder, Telles was the elected administrator of a county office that handles unclaimed estate and probate property cases. Since his arrest on suspicion he committed the crime, Telles has been jailed without bail, and his law license has been suspended 

German wrote articles that criticized Telles’s conduct in office and exposed an intimate relationship the Democrat had with a female coworker. After German’s stories were published, Telles lost his primary for a second term in office.

Telles denied stabbing German to death in his testimony, claiming he was “framed” in a broad conspiracy involving a real estate company, police, DNA analysts, former co-workers, and other supposed bad actors. 

“I am not the kind of person who would stab someone. I didn’t kill Mr. German,” Telles said during his hourslong, rambling testimony. “And that’s my testimony.”

Evidence against Telles included his DNA found under German’s fingernails. While Telles told the jury he took a walk and went to a gym at the time German was killed, evidence, in fact, showed Telles’s wife sent a text message to him around the same time of the murder asking him, “Where are you?” 

Prosecutors explained that Telles left his phone at home so he couldn’t be tracked. Prosecutor Christopher Hamner also told the jury that Telles blamed German for destroying his career, political reputation, and marriage.

German was 69 years old at the time of his murder. He was the only journalist killed in the United States in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. In Las Vegas, he was a “respected” reporter who spent 44 years covering crime and courts, according to ABC 12 Las Vegas.