Claude Brown on Gang Violence

I write regarding a 27-year sentence for a brutal murder reported in Metro (May 10). How can this be? The man who did the killing is smiling in your photograph. The young woman, Debbie Ann Scott, a passenger in a pickup truck that passed the line of customized cars driven by Ronald Fisher Elam and his friends and unlawfully obstructing traffic flow, is dead. The driver’s effort to pass the hoodlums is something any of us might be so bold to attempt. The young woman is dead forever. Elam smiles--out in 13 1/2 years.

I read of two more young girls in Los Angeles gunned down with machine guns and shotguns while riding in their car, apparently a case of mistaken identity. Ironically, I also read that in this climate where the street gangs have more and more powerful guns, the National Rifle Assn. is urging state legislators to loosen our gun control laws. Where are we going?

Perhaps if the punishment fit the crime and came swiftly, these people would consider their violent, lethal choices more seriously. The premeditated taking of a life should end the life of the killer, as it ends the life of the victim. If the death penalty is not given, then life imprisonment without any possibility of parole is the only other appropriate sentence.

TERRANCE R. McKNIGHT

Pacific Palisades