LA District Attorney Won’t Pursue the Death Penalty Because it ​“Doesn’t Serve as a Deterrent” and ​“Does Not Bring People Back”

On September 26, 2023, Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón announced that he would not seek the death penal­ty in the case of slain Sheriff’s Deputy Ryan Clinkunbroomer. ​“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,” said Gascón at a news con­fer­ence, ​“The real­i­ty is that the death penal­ty doesn’t serve as a deter­rent, and the death penal­ty does not bring peo­ple back. …What I can assure you is that we’re going to do every­thing with­in our legal pow­er to make sure that this defen­dant nev­er is out of prison.”

The moth­er of the vic­tim, Kim Clinkunbroomer, was pub­licly crit­i­cal of Gascón’s deci­sion. She told ABC News, ​“How dare you, on nation­al TV, tell me you’re not seek­ing the death penal­ty because it won’t bring my son back? My son’s not com­ing back, but that does­n’t mean you should­n’t do your job.” She added, ​“People need to be pun­ished for the crimes they commit.” 

30-year-old, new­ly engaged Deputy Clinkunbroomer was shot and killed while sit­ting in his patrol car out­side the Palmdale Sherriff’s Station on September 16, 2023. 29-year-old Kevin Salazar, a diag­nosed schiz­o­phrenic with a long his­to­ry of men­tal ill­ness, was charged with the crime on September 20, 2023, and has pled not guilty and not guilty by rea­son of insan­i­ty; if con­vict­ed, Mr. Salazar will be sen­tenced to life without parole.

The edi­to­r­i­al board of the Los Angeles Daily News agreed with DA Gascón’s deci­sion, writ­ing ​“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. … 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.”

The state has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 2006 and has had a guber­na­to­r­i­al mora­to­ri­um in place since Governor Gavin Newsom took office in 2019. California has the largest death row in the nation with 665 pris­on­ers, accord­ing to the Legal Defense Fund’s January 1, 2023 Death Row USA.