There was a window of time when the (Earl) Warren Supreme Court made death sentences illegal. All prisoners under death sentences had their sentences commuted to life. It was only after the other Warren (Burger) Supreme Court, that death sentences became legal again.
I think we’re just one Obama appointee away from the Supreme Court stopping the death penalty again. This time permanently.
Yes, I know that was during the death penalty hiatus. Simply making an observation that this issue would likely have been non-existent a short time before. The killers would have been seldom mentioned footnotes of local history.