A Raleigh defense lawyer told legislators Tuesday that they should consider taking decisions about which murder suspects face the death penalty away from district attorneys.

Joseph B. Cheshire V proposed having the state establish a panel to determine before trial whether a defendant should face the death penalty if convicted.

The suggestion interested legislators on a House committee studying how North Carolina carries out capital punishment. Cheshire said such a panel would help take political considerations out of murder cases.

Rep. Paul Luebke, a Durham Democrat, said a disproportionate number of death row inmates come from a small group of counties, while 39 counties have no one on death row.

"A person's chances of being sent to death row seem to depend on the district where the crime was committed," he said.

Peg Dorer, director of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, criticized Cheshire's suggestion, saying it would reduce prosecutors' discretion.

"They don't believe their current discretion is inadequate or inappropriate," she said.

The committee started meeting about a year ago after the House failed to pass a two-year moratorium on the death penalty.

Cheshire said the system has improved in recent years. The Office of Indigent Defense Services, which started appointing and paying lawyers for poor criminal defendants in 2001, eliminated incompetent or inexperienced lawyers from defending murder suspects, he said. Another help was a 2004 law requiring prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers to share information, he said.

The law was mainly a response to cases in which prosecutors or police investigators withheld information favorable to the defendant.

The most noteworthy case was that of former death row inmate Alan Gell of Bertie County. Gell had been convicted of murder in 1998 after prosecutors withheld numerous witness statements casting doubt on his guilt. He was acquitted on retrial in 2004.

Misconduct is rare, DA says

Tom Lock, district attorney for Johnston, Harnett and Lee counties, told legislators that misconduct by prosecutors is rare but that sometimes they make mistakes.

"There is no epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct," he said.

James E. Coleman, a Duke law professor who is representing death row inmate Guy LeGrande, said the prosecutor abused his discretion in LeGrande's case. Attorneys for LeGrande, who defended himself at his trial, say he is mentally ill. LeGrande's execution is scheduled for Dec. 1.

Prosecutors say LeGrande is not mentally ill.

In 1993, Tommy Munford recruited LeGrande, who is black, to murder his wife. Munford, who is white, testified against LeGrande and was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Coleman said that prosecutors in Stanly County decided on the plea agreement with Munford because, based on the results of a similar murder-for-hire case from 1994, they did not think a jury would sentence a white defendant to death.

Prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty against the person the jury was most likely to sentence to death, Coleman said.

Michael Parker, district attorney from the district that includes Stanly County, said that race had nothing to do with the trial's results. Parker did not prosecute LeGrande but supports the death sentence for LeGrande.

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