That they could not hang her twice?
I think it was probably more the case that people may have felt that divine providence was saying she wasn’t guilty of killing the child and that he or she was born dead and that perhaps Maggie had no choice in the conception to boot.
“That they could not hang her twice?”
Well, indeed she had been hanged. But don’t they say: hanged by the neck until dead?
But, even if that was the case I agree that the “people” are entitled to a change of heart.
The quality of Mercy is not strained.