When does anyone plead guilty and get a life sentence in a state with no enforceable death penalty?  Not as often as in states that do have a death penalty, but it does happen.  Like, for instance, when a serial killer is already subject to a death sentence in another state.  That happened Friday in New York, Laura Italiano reports for the NY Post:

He killed the heiress. And he killed the flight attendant, too.

Serial sex killer Rodney Alcala took a surprise guilty plea in Manhattan this afternoon to taking the life of two women, both age 23, from 1971 and 1977.

The so-called "Dating Game" killer, 67, admitted to the 1971 murder of TWA flight attendant Corelia Crilley and the 1977 murder of Ellen Hover, daughter of a Hollywood nightclub owner.

Under his plea, the pony-tailed monster will be sentenced next month to 25 years to life in prison -- a legally irrelevant term given that he will now be returned directly to death row in San Quentin Prison in California.

For background on the California cases, see Alcala v. Superior Court, 43 Cal. 4th 1205 (2008).  Alcala's current death penalty appeal is case S181535.  Nothing has happened on it since shortly after the judgment in 2010.  Alcala's first death sentence was overturned by the state courts.  The second one was affirmed by the state courts but overturned by the federal courts.  The 1996 act of Congress limiting federal court second-guessing of state court judgments did not apply because Alcala filed his petition before that act.