Twenty-nine years ago next month, a jury in Wiscasset  convicted a career criminal of manslaughter for killing a Lewiston police officer, and of the attempted murder of two other officers. Nicolo Leone fatally shot Officer David Payne 30 years ago this July.

The case was one of the first homicides I covered after college. It had nothing to do with Wiscasset and at the time, neither did I. A justice's decision following extensive publicity in Androscoggin County placed the trial here on a change of venue.

So Lincoln County residents decided the verdicts in Payne's death and the other charges. The verdicts came after jurors continued to work, by their choice, into the overnight.

Reading and watching the coverage that has followed the April 25 slaying of Somerset County Sheriff's Cpl. Eugene Cole brought the David Payne trial back for me. We reporters sometimes call trials by the defendants' names because that person, their whereabouts and statements make up much of the testimony, sometimes most of it, and their future is on the line. But somewhere along the way, I got back to calling homicide trials by the victims' names, in part to remind news consumers and me, it was not only about one person's fate being decided, but another's that already had been, allegedly by the defendant. 

Payne's and Cole's deaths in the line of duty both happened counties from here, but reverberated here and well beyond. Wiscasset Speedway's recent moment of silence for Cole, and the memorial lap his neighbor Shawn Austin took for him, illustrate that.

The reverberations are due to more than a venue change in one case and someone knowing the victim in the other. Those killed were the people who risk their lives for ours.

All honest work is honorable, theirs to a heightened degree due to that willingness. Besides the many shows of support in the aftermath of this latest loss, may we continue to show it going forward, through respect and thanks. Just as we importantly thank our veterans for their service, consider thanking our law enforcement officers for theirs. It might make their week.