The news this week that the district attorney for Staten Island, William Murphy, will be seeking the death penalty for the alleged murderer of two New York City policemen in a sting gone awry will likely raise a few eyebrows about town among the city’s anticapital-punishment crowd. Yet Mr. Murphy could not find a better indictment in which to pursue his borough’s first death-penalty case since New York reinstated capital punishment than the one against Ronell Wilson.

On the evening of March 10, 2003, according to prosecutors, Mr. Wilson shot undercover detectives Rodney Andrews and James Nemorin with a Rossi Model 720 .44-caliber revolver in the back seat of a black Nissan Maxima. The cold-blooded murder followed a botched firearms purchase, in which Mr. Wilson and several others attempted to sell the undercover officers a submachine gun near the Stapleton Houses. When the deal went wrong, Mr. Wilson shot the two officers in the back of the head and dumped their bodies on the street. Two days later, Mr. Wilson was apprehended, and he now sits in Rikers Island facing charges of first-degree murder.

Officers Andrews and Nemorin were the first police officers killed in the line of duty since the September 11 attacks. Officer Nemorin hailed from Haiti, moving here at the age of 21. He attended John Jay College of Criminal Justice and joined the force in 1995. His work over the years as a member of the department’s elite firearms investigations unit contributed to the removal of thousands of guns from the streets and the sharp decline in the city’s crime rate. He left behind a wife and three young children.

Officer Andrew’s 265 pounds and muscular frame belied his gentle demeanor. He dedicated his life to the protection of others; prior to serving his city as a police officer he served his country as a Navy SEAL. In his eulogy for the deceased officer, the Reverend Alphonse Cohen remarked that Andrews was a perpetual soldier in the “war that we face in the streets everyday.” He leaves behind two young boys and their mother.

Assassinating those meant to protect us is the worst sort of murder. With the killing last week of Councilman James Davis, a former police officer himself who spent his professional life up until his last dying day fighting gun violence, it is all the more appropriate that Mr. Wilson, if convicted, be punished to the fullest extent of the law.

“These are people who have no regard for human life,” the police union’s chief, Patrick Lynch, told the Daily News, regarding Mr. Wilson and his accomplices. If Mr. Wilson is found guilty, we see no reason why the State of New York should show him more mercy than he showed two of New York’s finest.