As the state Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for the execution of a Shelbyville woman's confessed killer, Bedford County's sheriff asks if it will ever happen.

"If he gets executed, he gets exactly what he deserves," Sheriff Clay Parker said Thursday afternoon of Gregory Thompson, 43, who's scheduled to die Feb. 7 for the murder of Brenda Blanton Lane. "But will it happen? Who knows?"

Thompson and his girlfriend abducted Blanton to get a car so they could drive to Marietta, Ga. They drove from a shopping center parking lot across the street from the police station and stopped in Coffee County where Blanton was stabbed with a rusty knife.

"I was a deputy at the time, working here," Parker said. "I helped do some things" connected with the 1985 murder investigation.

Legal sparring over Thompson's case took on a new dimension after the U.S. Supreme Court said the state could set a new execution date. New information on his sanity was presented with clams that he's not competent to be executed. The state says Tennessee only requires that the condemned know that they're to be executed and why. The state Supreme Court yesterday sided with the state Attorney General's office.

Parker is a student at the Nashville School of Law and noted such legal sparring "always happens" in death penalty cases.

"There are appeals from here to there and that's why prosecutors might let someone plead to a case," Parker said.

He mentioned no specific case, however District Attorney Mike McCown had placed all three options to Jason Christopher Underwood, 23, who's charged with the Oct. 24, 2004, stabbing deaths of Anthony Baltimore and Rebecca Ray, both 19, in their home.

Death, life with no chance of parole and life in jail with some chance of parole were the options McCown listed for prosecutors' request to a jury in Underwood case. On July 28, Assistant District Attorney Ann Filer filed notice that life in prison without chance of parole is the maximum sentence the state will ask from a jury in Underwood case. He's in jail on $2 million bond.

"It costs a tremendous amount of money to prosecute a death penalty case," Parker said. "Transcripts cost $30,000 to $50,000."

It's "astronomical," Parker said, noting "judicial economy" may result from a sentence of life without the chance of parole.

"And then it stops and it's not in the courts for the next 20 years," Parker said.

New Year's Day 2006 will be the 21st anniversary of Lane's murder.

"A lot of people don't understand why a prosecutor might not go for the death penalty," the sheriff said. "It takes forever to execute someone -- 20-30 years of litigation.

"Is it worth saying 'We're going to give you the death penalty, but you're really going to die of old age in prison,'" Parker asked.

"I know how the system works and know that there's always someone filing last minute papers.

"There needs to be an end, but the practical effect is that nobody knows.

"If a jury of his peers decided he deserves to die, who am I to argue?

"He's certainly deserving of his fate," the sheriff said.

"Maybe it will happen. Who knows? But I know there is always some group willing to file an appeal."