Deputy Sentenced to Life Term of Doubt and Questions

Cops will tell you that the file never closes on a murder case.

No one is publicly calling Brian Scanlan’s shooting of fellow Deputy Sheriff Darryn Robins a homicide, but it likely will linger in local history as the case that never closed.

It will linger because some people will never be able to understand how it could have happened. I talked to several current and former law enforcement officers in the days after the shooting and, almost unanimously, they were incredulous that a veteran officer like Scanlan would use a loaded gun during training.

No explanation given since then makes it any more believable. Scanlan took his gun out. . . . Robins startled him during the drill by pointing a gun at him. . . . Scanlan jumped back and reflexively squeezed the trigger.

That the explanation is hard to believe doesn’t mean it isn’t true; it just means that there always will be a pool of doubt.

For Scanlan, that will be part of his curse to bear. Surely, he will lose his job and most likely any chance of ever working again in law enforcement. There is always the possibility of a lawsuit. On top of all that--if we accept Scanlan’s version of events--is the lifelong pain of knowing he killed one of his friends.

That is a heavy load, indeed.

In that regard, I’m wondering about crimes and punishment.

I wonder how, in the long run, Scanlan will handle what he did. I wonder if the grand jury really has done him a favor by exonerating him.

I’m sure Scanlan wasn’t begging anyone to charge or convict him of something, but somewhere down the road, he may wish someone had.

The district attorney had that option and let it go. Prosecutors said they had a case, on paper, of involuntary manslaughter. They could have filed a charge, and no one could have vociferously challenged them. After all, Scanlan was mindlessly careless, and the result was a dead man.

People have gone to jail for crimes like that. This wasn’t an accidental shooting in the sense that someone cleans a pistol they think is empty and it discharges and hits someone. It strikes me more like a drunk driver--perhaps a fine citizen, otherwise--hitting and killing a pedestrian. The system understands there was no malice involved, but it still punishes the driver for the loss of life because he should have known he was placing people in jeopardy.

The district attorney’s office recognized that there was a case against Scanlan, and because it knows the law and is supposed to dispense it dispassionately, says it wanted to file the appropriate charge. Maybe it thought no jury would ever convict Scanlan. Maybe the grand jury’s decision bears that out.

That’s why I was in a minority among my colleagues about taking this to the grand jury. Doing so opened up the district attorney for exactly what it’s received--questions about uneven distribution of justice.

Were the jurors more sympathetic toward Scanlan because he was a law enforcement officer? Did race, however subconsciously, enter into the jurors’ minds? Just what was Darryn Robins’ life worth, anyway?

Those are the kind of things the district attorney shouldn’t have to think about when it prepares a case. They are the things a grand jury of citizens may think about.

All this may sound like I’m out for Scanlan’s neck. Absolutely not true; I don’t have any overwhelming indignation that he isn’t being charged. I’m even prepared to accept at face value that things happened as he has said.

But this was a crime, and it deserves punishment. It’s always amazing to me how so many law-and-order types suddenly become bleeding-heart liberals when it comes to explaining away law enforcement officials on trial.

You may scoff, but I think Brian Scanlan would be better served by punishment. That doesn’t mean putting him in jail and throwing away the key. Perhaps jail time isn’t even appropriate.

But to make sense of this case, and to assure everyone that justice is blind, he should have been charged and either pleaded guilty or taken his chances with a jury. The grand jury has said that, in the eyes of the law, he did nothing wrong. Everyone, including Scanlan, knows that isn’t right. A conviction and a sentence, even one that only included a minimal jail time or probation, would have matched crime and punishment.

That’s the way this case file could have been closed, once and for all. That’s the way that some sense of order and fairness could have been carved out of a situation that is a disaster for everyone.

In the final analysis, the district attorney should have filed the charge warranted under the law--however unpopular it may have been.

It would have been the best outcome for a public that deserves accountability for deaths caused by recklessness.

And in a strange way, over the long haul it perhaps would have been the best outcome for Brian Scanlan too.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.