RALEIGH - Guy LeGrande wore a Superman T-shirt while defending himself at his death penalty trial in 1996. He told jurors to "kiss my natural black [expletive] in the showroom window of Heilig-Meyers." He urged them to "pull the damn switch." And the jury sentenced him to death.

On Tuesday, when Gov. Mike Easley hears arguments about whether to spare LeGrande's life, the governor will step into the middle of a percolating national debate about whether it is appropriate to execute those with severe mental illness.

In recent years, various states and then the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juveniles and the mentally retarded. The rationale was that the killers' age or limited mental function made them less culpable for their crimes and not among the "worst of the worst" killers for whom the death penalty is intended.

The same logic, some say, should apply to killers who suffer from severe mental illness.

"Severely mentally ill people are not the worst of the worst," said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of the program to abolish the death penalty at Amnesty International USA. "Their crimes are the symptoms of those illnesses."

Some national organizations have weighed in on the debate. In August, the American Bar Association passed a resolution saying defendants should not be executed if they had severe mental illness when the crime was committed or if their illness prevents them from helping their appellate lawyers, leads them to give up their appeals or makes them unable to understand the purpose of their execution. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association have passed the same resolution.

A few appellate judges across the country have voiced similar concerns in written opinions. Last month, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Evelyn Lundberg Stratton wrote in an opinion, "I believe that the time has come to reexamine whether we, as a society, should administer the death penalty to a person with a serious mental illness."

LeGrande's attorneys say he was denied his right to a fair trial and the ability to fully pursue his appeals because his grandiose delusions convinced him that he could succeed as his own lawyer.

In his closing argument to Stanly County jurors before they decided whether he should live or die, LeGrande called them anti-Christs, told them that "hell ain't deep enough for you people" and ended with this thought: "Pull the switch and let the good times roll."

The jury took 45 minutes to sentence LeGrande to death -- a sentence to be carried out Dec. 1 at Raleigh's Central Prison.

Although some think LeGrande's case illustrates the need for a national debate, others see this as just another effort by death penalty opponents to limit those who could face executions.

"What death penalty opponents try to do is get laws to exclude people from consideration," said Wake District Attorney Colon Willoughby. "Those decisions should be left up to juries."

Complicating the debate is a thorny matter that comes up nearly every time a defendant claims to be mentally ill: conflicting testimony from experts about whether the claim is warranted.

"The $64,000 question is the legitimacy of the diagnosis," said Garry Frank, president of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys and the top prosecutor for Alexander, Davidson, Davie, and Iredell counties.

Willoughby adds that prosecutors are skeptical of the testimony of a few defense experts. "Some very good mental health professionals get tainted by the advocacy conduct of a few who are by and large anti-death penalty and seem willing to testify about almost anything and are well-paid for doing it," he said.

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