Re: Colleen Cason’s Aug. 5 column, “Widow marks day the unthinkable happened”:
Cason’s column on the murder of Simi Police Officer Michael Clark in l995 and the effect on his widow Jenifer, it is stated that subsequently a bill was passed “that made it an automatic first-degree murder offense to kill a police officer.”

There was legislation passed as a result of Officer Clark’s murder, but the specifics of the legislation (for which I wrote the initial draft) are not as described in Cason’s column.

In fact, the legislation passed, Penal Code section l90 (c), does not change the degree of the murder and make murder of a police officer automatically first degree. Instead, it provided that punishment for almost all second-degree murders of police officers would be life without the possibility of parole (the punishment for other second-degree murders is a term of l5 years to life, meaning someone convicted of second-degree murder could be paroled after serving almost l5 years or serve a sentence longer than that up to and including life).

— Pete Kossoris, Thousand Oaks

(The writer is a former prosecutor with the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office. — Editor)