‘Guilty’ needs death penalty to keep NM’s officers safe

For the family, friends and fellow officers of slain Rio Rancho police officer Gregg “Nigel” Benner, the fact the jury dealt with his killer last week by delivering a guilty verdict in just three hours was likely cold comfort. As is the fact Andrew Romero will die in prison. And while it won’t bring back Benner, a military veteran who was shot by Romero last Memorial Day during a traffic stop, reinstituting the death penalty for those who kill law enforcement officers would not only force such murderers to face the death sentences they have single-handedly delivered, but common sense and New Mexico history dictate that it would act as a deterrent. Nothing else will for this hardened class of criminal.

Back in 1980, during the infamous State Penitentiary riot, 33 inmates were gruesomely murdered, but all guards taken hostage survived. Killing a New Mexico prison employee in 1980 meant the death penalty.

In 1987, convicted mass-murderer William Wayne Gilbert led the escape of six other New Mexico inmates out of the pen’s maximum security unit and shot a prison guard in the shoulder. Considering his death sentence had been commuted by then-Gov. Toney Anaya the year prior, there is strong reason to believe he did not shoot to kill or finish the job because killing a prison employee in 1987 meant the death penalty.

In 2001, prisoner-for-life Matthew Griffin, aka the ninja bandit, explained that when he attacked a State Penitentiary employee, “I wasn’t trying to cut his throat. … I was just trying to maim him” because killing a New Mexico prison employee in 2001 meant the death penalty.

And in 2002, a shank-wielding Sierra County Detention Center inmate took guard Marylyn Crawford prisoner and cut, but did not kill, her. Killing a prison employee in 2002 meant the death penalty.

In 2009, the state Legislature passed and Gov. Bill Richardson, who was a political convert while seeking the Democratic nomination for president, signed the law abolishing the death penalty in New Mexico, replacing it with a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

And Benner, along with Hatch officer Jose Chavez, Albuquerque officer Daniel Webster, Alamogordo officer Clint Corvinus, Farmington officer Victoria Chavez and Sandoval County Sgt. Joseph Harris have all been shot and killed since.

Gov. Susana Martinez is calling for lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty in New Mexico for murderers of police officers, corrections officers and children. She is correct in saying that “a society that fails to adequately protect and defend those who protect all of us is a society that will be undone and unsafe.”

Just ask the families, friends and fellow officers of Benner, Chavez, Webster, Corvinus, Chavez and Harris.