When a state chooses to make a dramatic change in the way it enforces law and order -- most notably in how it punishes those who break the law, it’s safe to assume the change would come after careful study, well-reasoned feedback from the state’s residents or maybe after those residents took to the streets to protest and demand change.

But when the state of Minnesota chose to abolish the death penalty in the early 20th century, the change came not from any of those things, but from the fallout of a forbidden love affair between a mutinous, bar-brawling Englishman and a teenage boy. And how the people from the land of 10,000 lakes reacted to it.