Seventeen years have passed since Jeffrey Landrigan murdered Chester Dean Dyer, but the story won't go away. Now the record is resting in the U.S. Supreme Court on Arizona's appeal from a regrettable decision in the 9th Circuit. It's time to mark this case closed.

The sordid facts are of little interest in themselves, but the developing law on capital punishment -- especially in view of the changed membership on the high court -- merits your attention. The times, they are a-changing.

In the case at hand, the record begins in the late 1970s, when Landrigan was working and thieving in Oklahoma. In 1982 he murdered Greg Brown, whom he called his "best friend," and began a 40-year sentence in prison. While in prison he nearly killed another inmate: "I stabbed him 14 times." On Nov. 10, 1989, he escaped and fled to Phoenix. Three days later he fell in with Chester Dyer. Hard luck for Dyer. Landrigan strangled him, stabbed him repeatedly, and left his mutilated body on the bed they had occupied.

Landrigan was soon caught. A state jury convicted him of first degree murder. After Arizona courts affirmed the conviction and sentence, Landrigan went into federal court on habeas corpus. He lost before District Judge Roslyn O. Silver but won a split decision on appeal to the 9th Circuit. There Judge Michael Hawkins spoke for the majority in concluding that the defendant's counsel, Dennis Farrell, had failed to defend him adequately. The defendant therefore deserved a fresh hearing on unheard evidence that might have led to a lesser sentence.

Specifically, Judge Hawkins ruled that Farrell should have dwelled upon such factors as these: "his biological mother's use of drugs and alcohol during gestation, his adoptive mother's alcoholism and its adverse effect on Landrigan's upbringing, and information regarding his biological father and his family history of violence." Landrigan was entitled to the testimony of a medical expert who would assist "in establishing mitigating evidence regarding the effects of drug and alcohol use on a developing fetus." The defendant's trial counsel had failed to develop evidence regarding "criminal psychobiology and congenital determinants."