Death penalty and death of a deputy

The cold-blooded killing of Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer as he sat in his patrol vehicle last week in Palmdale is yet another tragic example of the ways in which our brave lawenforcement officers face mortal danger simply by wearing the uniform.

It's so often not the individual the callous killers are after; it's what they symbolize — the rule of law in our society, the protection of ordinary people from the crazed and the criminals among us.

Clinkunbroomer, a thirdgeneration deputy, an affable and popular 30-year-old recently engaged to be married, to us and to the good people of our county represented the very best of California.

That the family of the man arrested in the killing, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, says that he is mentally ill and plagued by many demons — that just compounds the tragedy. It's all well and good to recognize that. And it's not going to bring Clinkunbroomer back to his loved ones.

Something else that is not going to bring him back is any future execution by the state of his killer. Though District Attorney George Gascón is under pressure to pursue the death penalty in this case, as the ultimate kind of symbolism that would show just how heinous this crime is, Gascón is correct not to.

“If I thought that the death penalty was going to stop people from committing brutal murders, I would seek it. But we know that it won't. The reality is that the death penalty doesn't serve as a deterrent, and the death penalty does not bring people back,” Gascón said at a news conference.

This isn't a sentimental stance — it's a practical one: Police chiefs surveyed nationwide rank the death penalty lowest among ways to reduce violent crime. In California, where there is already a moratorium on capital punishment, death-penalty sentences inevitably result in endless and endlessly expensive legal battles that tie up our court system with no resolution.

On the moral front, we also take to heart the central thesis of those who oppose the death penalty on ethical grounds: A society that respects life does not deliberately kill human beings.

May Ryan Clinkunbroomer rest in peace, and may his killer spend the rest of his life behind bars.