CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — Time stopped in June 2022 for Corey Steven Snider, 43, and Chasity Wilkinson Romeo, 33, when authorities say a Detroit man shot them dead in the Good Hope home the three shared.

Whether the suspect — Allen Leon Schaffer — spends the rest of his life in West Virginia prison could depend in large part on how Harrison Circuit Judge D. Andrew McMunn interprets the legal collision of a 2020 law and a 1986 West Virginia Supreme Court decision, Justice v. Hedrick.

Because a jury convicted Schaffer of second-degree murder — not first-degree murder — in both homicides, he faces a maximum of 40 years in prison on each count, with parole eligibility in 10 years, when he's sentenced in December.

Schaffer was convicted of other charges — two charges of concealment of a dead human

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