Bio: Dave grew up in Reno, the son of a university professor and a school teacher. After graduating from Reno High School, he attended the University of Nevada for two years before transferring to Westminster College in Salt Lake City. He met his wife, Laura. They raised their son there until he graduated from the University of Utah College of Law in 1991.

After law school, Dave returned to Nevada, where he served as a rural prosecutor in Humboldt and Pershing Counties for five years before becoming a Deputy Attorney General in 1997. Dave served as a prosecutor in the Attorney General's office for the next 15 years, prosecuting high-level crimes, including Murder. While there, Dave also represented the state in highly complex death penalty and other litigation, serving as Capital Case Coordinator from 2005 to 2008.

Dave has handled somewhere between 50 and 100 felony jury trials to verdict during his career, and has argued over 30 times in front of the Nevada Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, including death penalty cases in front of both courts. He also practiced in front of the United States Supreme Court, writing amicus and merits briefs for that Court.

After leaving the Attorney General's office, Dave continued to practice criminal law in his own law practice for most of the next 14 years, though he worked as a staff attorney for the Employment Security Division during the 2000 pandemic.

Throughout his career, Dave has written and lectured on criminal law and procedure.
Dave fell in love with Storey County during a previous run for District Attorney and moved here shortly after the death of his beloved wife in 2022.