USA - Alabama. Judge Allen Millican told Glenn Holladay he will only leave prison in a pine box

Etowah County Circuit Judge Allen Millican told Glenn Holladay he will only leave prison in a pine box. Millican said he had no choice but to follow a federal court order as he resentenced Holladay for the August 1986 slayings of 3 people. Holladay, 59, was sentenced to death in 1987, but a federal judge ruled in 2006 that he cannot be executed because he is mentally retarded. That required he be resentenced. In a capital murder conviction, a judge can only sentence someone to death or life without the possibility of parole. Holladay was convicted of capital murder in the shooting deaths of his ex-wife, Rebecca Ledbetter Holladay; her boyfriend, David Robinson; and Larry Thomas Jr., a 16-year-old neighbor and friend of Rebecca Holladay's son. Millican said he has reviewed the case "from beginning to end ... I cannot impose the death penalty that the jury handed down. "I can impose death by incarceration in the sentence of life without the possibility of parole," he told Holladay. "You get to come out of prison in a pine box." He has been on death row in a state prison for more than 20 years. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in January upheld a decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Propst, who ruled on Nov. 4, 2006 that Holladay cannot be executed. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that those who are mentally challenged cannot be executed. In 2006, Propst ruled Holladay could not be executed because his IQ score of 64, based from 10 different tests, was below Alabama's standard for mental retardation of 70.