Robert Peter Zook Jr. deserves the death penalty for murdering two persons in July 1985, prosecutors and the victims' families argue. But he's not going to get it.

Robert Peter Zook Jr. deserves the death penalty for murdering two persons in July 1985, prosecutors and the victims' families argue. But he's not going to get it.
Zook, now 46, was convicted and sentenced to death in two separate trials for murdering Paul Conard, 55, and 19-year-old Sandra Wiker in a botched burglary.
After 20 years on death row, Zook convinced the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last November that he deserved a new penalty hearing because the juries hadn't been told about a brain injury his attorneys claim he suffered as a child.
That's just 20 years too long, prosecutors concluded, to find witnesses, to argue Zook's mental health issues, and to put the victims' families through yet another court proceeding.
Today, Lancaster County Court President Judge Louis J. Farina changed Zook's sentence from death to life in prison without parole.
While prosecutors and family members don't agree with the change in sentence, Assistant District Attorney Craig Stedman said "because he does deserve the death penalty,'' the reality is that Zook could keep appealing and "we could find ourselves back here in another 20 years."
There is no parole in Pennsylvania for lifers.
Zook has continuously appealed his conviction, including a complaint that prosecutors implanted radio transmitters in his brain and belly as part of a conspiracy with his defense attorneys.
But the Supreme Court justices and Farina agreed that Zook "was not mentally ill''. However, the Supreme Court ruled that Zook deserved a new hearing because defense attorneys did not raise evidence of the brain injury Zook sustained early in his life, which may have caused "a drastic change in personality'' at the time of the murders.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986. Zook appealed and was tried again in 1990, during which time he was convicted and sentenced to death again.