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.

James E. Coleman Jr., a Duke University law professor who is pursuing clemency for LeGrande, said it is important that experts act as scientists, not advocates.

"For the process to work, everybody has to bring in competent psychiatrists with integrity to do the assessment," he said. "The courts have to make sure that happens."

In LeGrande's case, he said, that has not happened.

Killer for hire

LeGrande, 47, was born in Stanly County, east of Charlotte, the fourth of six siblings, and was raised in Philadelphia. He told jurors and doctors that he attended college for two years, he once tried out with the Philadelphia Eagles football team, he was in the Air Force for four years and he worked at a post office for six.

In 1993, LeGrande was working at a restaurant in Albemarle when he was recruited by a co-worker, Tommy Munford, to kill Munford's estranged wife for $6,500. On July 27, 1993, Munford provided the gun, dropped off LeGrande near his wife's house and took his two children to the beach to provide himself an alibi. LeGrande waited several hours, went into the house and shot Ellen Munford twice in the back.

Munford testified against LeGrande, was allowed to plead guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Thomas Munford, the victim's son, was 6 years old when his mother was killed. He is not convinced that LeGrande suffers from mental illness, noting the hours LeGrande had to think about his crime.

"He planned out well in advance what he was going to do. He had plenty of time to sit and think on it. I don't think he's mentally ill," said Munford, 19, of Virginia Beach, Va., who plans to witness the execution.

LeGrande says he does not think his execution will happen. He insists in various letters that he will be pardoned and will receive a settlement of as much as $3 billion from the state. After his release, LeGrande has indicated, he plans to leave North Carolina and take a private jet to a tropical island. He also plans to use his settlement money to host a "first meal" with T-bone steaks, garlic bread, fresh salads and loaded baked potatoes for him, Easley and the lawyers with the Attorney General's Office who are working to see him executed.

Such grandiose thinking is a recurring theme in LeGrande's life, according to relatives, doctors and lawyers who have interacted with him over the years.

His relatives say LeGrande would have wild mood swings from calmness to extreme anger. He would rant and rave to himself and pace back and forth. LeGrande's sister and half-sister suffer from bipolar disorder and chronic paranoid schizophrenia, respectively, which his attorneys say increases his likelihood of having mental illness.

After his arrest in 1995, LeGrande insisted on being his own lawyer. A state psychiatrist concluded that LeGrande had a personality disorder with narcissistic and grandiose traits and recommended a treatment of lithium, which LeGrande refused. A state psychologist said LeGrande did not appear to suffer from bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. LeGrande was found competent to stand trial and to be his own lawyer.

Before his trial in 1996, two lawyers appointed as standby counsel asked the judge to rule that LeGrande was incompetent. They said LeGrande had "grandiose delusions" about his legal abilities, was unprepared for trial and spurned their assistance because he thought they were conspiring with prosecutors.

The trial judge asked LeGrande whether he wanted to be heard on the challenge to his competency. LeGrande said he did not and tore up the lawyer's motion. The judge refused to hear the lawyers' request.

Own worst enemy?

At trial, LeGrande introduced evidence that helped the prosecutors, evidence they could not have introduced on their own. He insulted jurors and got the sentence he asked them to impose, according to the lawyers working on his behalf but without his permission. (Coleman was kicked out of his only meeting with LeGrande after 30 minutes.)

In 1998, LeGrande's family tried to file appeals on his behalf. Dr. Richard Dudley Jr., a New York psychiatrist, talked to LeGrande for six hours by saying he was doing research and hiding his real aim: evaluating LeGrande's competence. Dudley concluded that LeGrande was psychotic and had grandiose and persecutory delusions.

But when LeGrande's relatives tried to have him declared incompetent to handle his own appeals, the judge asked LeGrande what he thought. LeGrande argued that the doctor needed his consent for a legitimate evaluation -- the same argument the state made. The judge sided with LeGrande and rejected the relatives' attempt to intervene.

What happened in LeGrande's case fits a pattern, said Amnesty's Gunawardena-Vaughn. "In many instances in the case of mentally ill offenders, they are their own worst enemies," she said.

Although most death penalty appeals raise the issue of competency of the inmates' lawyers, this one instead questions the competency of LeGrande because he was his own lawyer.

Coleman said he thinks the judges failed to hold legitimate competency hearings by allowing LeGrande to have a say.

"You can't have a hearing that is one-sided. You can't have a hearing where the people who assert his incompetence aren't permitted to present a case," Coleman said. "The judge has to basically take control, make sure the defendant is examined, and make sure that there is a lawyer appointed to present the case that he's not competent. That's never been done in this case."

Coleman said he thinks the trial judges failed to protect LeGrande, and it falls to Easley.

"If the courts aren't able to protect them, I think the governor has to protect them," he said.