They justified this sentence by realizing the state of Tennessee won’t have to pay millions of dollars for all of the appeals that death row cases bring up and decided a life sentence with no chance of parole was a way to lock this monster up forever without running up a huge tab.
I always look at these kinder and gentler jurys and wonder how they would feel if they had to sit and look at photos of their son or daughter hacked up and discarded like a piece of trash, after being raped and tortured for days on end. Sentence them to death and turn them over to the family members to carry out the states decree.