
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 6, 1990                   TAG: 9003062066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                 LENGTH: Short

DECISION INVALIDATES N.C. DEATH SENTENCES

The Supreme Court on Monday invalidated a provision of North Carolina's death penalty law, ruling 6-3 that it unconstitutionally limited jurors' ability to fully consider evidence favorable to defendants.

Lacy Thornburgh, North Carolina's attorney general, said the decision would invalidate the sentences of up to 70 of the 84 prisoners on death row and require new sentencing hearings. Since the death penalty was reinstated, three prisoners have been executed in the state.

Under the state law, once a jury convicts a defendant of capital murder, it determines whether to impose the death penalty by weighing the "aggravating" evidence presented by the prosecution and the "mitigating" evidence presented by the defendant.

A jury could consider only those aggravating or mitigating circumstances that it agreed unanimously had been proved.

The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the law in an appeal brought by a man convicted of murdering a deputy sheriff.

Overturning that decision on Monday in an opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall, the court ruled that the requirement of unanimity impermissibly limited the jury's ability to give full consideration to the mitigating evidence.

Marshall's opinion was joined by Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Byron R. White, Harry A. Blackmun, and John Paul Stevens. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy filed a separate concurring opinion.

Justice Antonin Scalia filed a dissenting opinion in which Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Sandra Day O'Connor joined.

by CNB