That means the Attorney General's Office will "be actively involved in communicating with the Board of Pardons and Parole," he said.

Time may have passed, but prosecutors do not believe Tillman has changed since the night of the slaying.

"We still see him as a danger — based on the heinous nature of the crime, everything that went into planning it, and the threats he communicated to Lori Groneman and her family," Torgensen said.

"She's still afraid of him," Torgensen said.

Mark Schoenfeld's parents, whom Torgensen said are elderly, said they felt strongly that they did not want to go through a prolonged resentencing to try again for the death penalty.

Tillman has been scheduled to die four times, but his case took a new turn when his lawyers insisted that prosecutors did not turn over critical written evidence to defense attorneys at trial.

That was a 50-page transcript of a polygraph interview between Salt Lake Police Sgt. Kenneth Thirsk and a key witness, Carla Sagers, who was Tillman's girlfriend at the time of the murder and who accompanied him to Schoenfeld's home and testified she witnessed the killing.

Sagers had been granted immunity for testifying against Tillman and her testimony was pivotal in his conviction.

However, Judge Lewis in 2003 vacated Tillman's death warrant and ruled that the withheld evidence could have violated Tillman's right to a fair trial.

Tillman's case, which had been before the Utah Supreme Court twice before, went before the high court a third time. The latest Supreme Court ruling issued in August was unanimous in Tillman's favor — the withheld evidence "tends to undermine the credibility of Sagers, unquestionably the most important trial witness" and could have influenced at least one juror to question Tillman's role in Schoenfeld's slaying.

Justice Michael Durrant, who wrote the opinion, argued that if the transcript had been available at trial, Tillman might have been better able to fight prosecutors' efforts to claim Sagers was a victim. "That ability may very well have been the difference between life and death," Durrant wrote.

Torgensen, however, said on Monday that Tillman's conviction had been upheld and prosecutors had enough evidence to argue effectively during the penalty phase of a new sentencing. But given Tillman's advanced age, even getting a new death sentence would not result in his execution because death penalty cases automatically trigger a series of appeals in both state and federal courts. "Based on Mr. Tillman's age, the fact that it occurred 23 years ago, all things considered, the state and the victims decided our best effort was to make sure the Board of Pardons doesn't ever release him," Torgensen said.

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E-mail: lindat@desnews.com