On Thu, 23 Jul 2009, David Gerard wrote:
A good example is the death of Michael Jackson, where the page was locked and the discussion was fast and furious. Being a sensitive BLP (at the time), that was IMO just the right way to do it. Admins stepping in and saying "no, this is a severe BLP hazard, we have to do this right."
I would think that a BLP ceases to be a BLP once the person dies. I suppose there could still be problems for other living people who are mentioned on the page, but the main BLP problem would seem to be gone (unless you want to extend BLP to the recently dead).