CHICAGO — A former handyman convicted of killing seven people at a suburban Chicago restaurant has been sentenced to life in prison after jurors decided he shouldn't go to death row.

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Prosecutors had sought the death penalty for 37-year-old James Degorski, who was convicted last month in the 1993 slayings at Brown's Chicken and Pasta in Palatine. Owners Richard and Lynn Ehlenfeldt, along with five employees, were shot and stabbed and their bodies stacked in a walk-in cooler and freezer.

Richard Ehlenfeldt had served as an aide to Wisconsin Acting Gov. Martin Schreiber during the 1970s. Lynn Ehlenfeldt was the daughter of the late Waupaca County Judge Nathan Wiese. The Ehlenfeldts' daughter, Rep. Jennifer Shilling, D-La Crosse, serves in the Wisconsin Assembly.

Before Tuesday's verdict, a prosecutor argued Degorski didn't show mercy to the victims: restaurant owners Richard Ehlenfeldt, 50, Lynn Ehlenfeldt, 49, and employees Michael Castro, 16, Rico Solis, 17, Marcus Nellsen, 31, Thomas Mennes, 32, and Guadalupe Maldonado, 46.

Prosecutors described in court how Degorski brought a gun, knife, gloves, a change of clothes and even waited with along with accomplice Juan Luna until customers had left before committing the crime on Jan. 9, 1993.

Degorski and Luna herded some of the workers into a cooler and others into a freezer and shot each of them multiple times, prosecutors said.

But a defense attorney said a life sentence still would be punishment.

Luna was convicted of murder in 2007 and also sentenced to life in prison. In that case, one juror had refused to vote in favor of the death penalty.