Plus ca change, ca change. (The more things change, they change.) Scaffold on which offender was hanged in Hennepin County Jail in 1895 (MN Dept. of Corrections Website)
A Minnesota jury convicted Brian Lee Flowers for the 2008 murders of Katricia Daniels and her 10-year old son, Robert Shepard. Flowers was 16 years old at the time of the murders and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
It is very common for me to see the denial of habeas corpus petitions as I review Minnesota court decisions for possible Minnesota Litigator posts. It is rare to see one granted. Kudos to William Mitchell College of Law Adjunct Professor Bradford Colbert for the achievement and kudos to U.S. District Court Judge Joan N. Ericksen (D. Minn.) for taking this very complicated and convoluted body of law and explaining the decision so well that even a civil litigator way outside his mental jurisdiction (someone like me, that is) can follow it.