Accused murderer Timothy O’Reilly could be the first man put to death in Michigan since 1938. He’s charged with killing a security guard during a 2001 armored-truck robbery at a federal credit union in suburban Detroit.

Usually such a crime wouldn’t carry a death sentence in Michigan — a state that has long banned executions — but because it happened on federal property, prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan can pursue the case as a capital crime.