Electric chair would have been proper for this crime.
A few years earlier or later and they would almost certainly have landed in the electric chair. Stringbean’s murder happened after the Supreme Court essentially suspended the death penalty in the Furman decision. I believe that happened in either ‘71 or ‘72. The death penalty was then reinstated in ‘76.
As for the murder itself, I vividly remember when Stringbean was killed. It really bothered me because like almost all Tennesseans who were alive in that era, I grew up on the Opry and, to a lesser extent, Hee Haw.
That may have been during the time the death penalty had been revoked and before it had been re-instituted, explaing why he didn’t get the death penalty. I’m glad his cousin/partner died in prison.