Sadness and alarm accompanying the execution-style shooting of Kansas Highway Patrol Trooper Conroy O’Brien May 24, 1978, was matched by despair and shock of state law enforcement leaders when informed of the decision to parole murderer Jimmie Nelms.

Kansas Highway Patrol Col. Erik Smith, Attorney General Kris Kobach and Sage Hill, president of the Kansas State Troopers Association, objected to the three-member Kansas Prisoner Review Board’s order to authorize release of 78-year-old Jimmie Nelms.

Nelms was convicted of premeditated felony murder and sentenced to two life terms in prison for killing O’Brien near Matfield Green during a traffic stop. O’Brien had pulled a speeding vehicle over on the Kansas Turnpike. While he wrote a citation, three men — including Nelms — overpowered the trooper. O’Brien was forced to walk into a roadside ditch and kneel on the ground. He was pistol-whipped by Nelms, who then shot the trooper twice in the back of the head at close range. O’Brien was 26.

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Hours later, Nelms and his partners eluded KHP Trooper Charles Smith following a chase on county roads and a shootout. The trio fled on foot and were captured.

Smith, who leads the Kansas Highway Patrol, said the agency opposed Nelms’ request for parole at multiple hearings, including the March session prompting the parole order. He said the board’s decision relayed to him this week by the secretary of the Kansas Department of Corrections was like a gut-punch.

“There is no conceivable world in which the release of a convicted cop killer – an executioner – is acceptable,” Smith said. “Yet, the legal framework allowing parole existed at the time and has now come full circle. So, while we may vehemently disagree with the board’s decision, we must live with it by continuing to support his surviving family and his blue family.”

Kobach said it didn’t make sense to release of a person who killed a law enforcement officer and was sentenced to prison for life.

“There is something deeply wrong with this picture. Those who murder law enforcement officers should expect to receive the death penalty, not to be walking free on the streets of Kansas,” Kobach said.

Kansas didn’t reinstate capital punishment until 1994, and the state hasn’t executed anyone since 1965.

Hill, president of the state’s trooper association, said it was unfathomable the review board betrayed O’Brien’s family, friends and “anyone who ever has or ever will wear the badge of a Kansas state trooper.”

“It does not go unnoticed when life sentences in Kansas aren’t worth the paper they’re written on, even for cop killers when there is no question of guilt,” Hill said.

Hill said the decision of review board members Carolyn Perez, Jeannie Wark and Mark Keating was “disgraceful and disgusting.”

“We hope you feel profound shame from this day forward whenever you see a young Kansas state trooper on the side of the road protecting our community,” he said.