RALEIGH - Lawyers for two Wake County murder suspects contend that their clients are mentally retarded, a designation that would make the two men ineligible for the death penalty that Wake prosecutors are seeking.

Lawyers for Antonio D. Chance, 30, and Joseph D. Sanderlin, 26, have pending requests for trials on the question of mental retardations. Chance, a convicted sex offender, is accused of kidnapping and killing Cynthia Moreland, 48, from a downtown Raleigh parking deck in August 2006 near her job at Progress Energy. Sanderlin is the second man to face trial for the rape and stabbing death of Lauren Redman, 22, in her West Raleigh apartment in November 2005.

Colon Willoughby, Wake's district attorney, opposed Sanderlin's request for a pretrial hearing but hasn't made a decision on Chance's request, which was formally filed Wednesday in the Wake County Courthouse.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that states could not execute the mentally retarded, a ruling that was in line with a North Carolina law passed around that time.

"This is the latest in new frontiers in capital litigation," Willoughby said. "We've seen a lot more of it, and we're seeing some of the same mental health professionals with the same opinions."

Death penalty opponents don't contest the newness but say North Carolina's law is specific enough in its definition of mental retardation that lawyers raise the defense only when it applies.

"You save all these resources, you save all this time," said Kenneth Rose, a senior staff member with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham. He said of district attorneys, "Why would they ever oppose a hearing? Very few of them had."

Since the 2002 Supreme Court ruling and the passage of state law that defines mental retardation, at least 13 people in North Carolina have been taken off death row, according to the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. In addition, at least 34 people have avoided facing the death penalty since 2001 after raising mental retardation claims, according to data kept by the center.

The number of murder suspects in North Carolina with pending claims of mental retardation wasn't available, but at least two men are contesting their death sentences in appeals, said Staples Hughes, state appellate defender.

North Carolina's law outlines factors that legally constitute mental retardation: Defendants must exhibit signs of retardation before the age of 18; show IQ scores less than 70; or display other difficulties in adapting to everyday life.

If a district attorney's office agrees to a hearing, then a Superior Court judge must hold one. Otherwise, it's up to a judge to decide whether to hold a hearing before a trial.

Repeated three grades

A report filed Wednesday with Chance's request cast more light on his upbringing.

Chance had taken IQ tests and had scores ranging from 66 to 75 on at least five occasions, the first, when he was 5, and the most recent, while he was in jail awaiting his trial on the murder charge, according to a report by Ginger Calloway, a Raleigh psychologist. His lawyers, leaning on research, also suggested that his highest scores may not be accurate, because they came from older tests.

"It makes a clear and convincing argument that Antonio is retarded," said Karl Knudsen, one of Chance's attorneys.

Indifferent mother

Chance spent time in special education classes and repeated kindergarten, fourth and ninth grades. His mother, Joyce Chance, was investigated by the Department of Social Services for once leaving 2-year-old Antonio alone for a day with his 7-month old sister. She also once dropped her children off with a neighbor, leaving a note that read, "I don't care what you do with them."

Antonio Chance dropped out of school when he was 17 and in the ninth grade because of a 1994 conviction that sent him to prison for sexually assaulting and robbing a 32-year-old man in Fuquay-Varina. He was released in 1998 and later convicted of failing to file his name and address on the state's sex offender registry.

His family members told Calloway that Chance had been using a lot of drugs in the time leading up his arrest.

Walter Moreland, the husband of Cynthia Moreland, said he's trying not to think about the man accused of killing his wife of 23 years until the October trial. Until then, Moreland said he is busying himself by working, taking self-defense training and doing everyday errands.

This weekend, he'll be celebrating the marriage of daughter Keisha Moreland.

"I don't want to get angry," Moreland said. "I just ignore what the defense lawyers have submitted."

In Sanderlin's case, Willoughby opposed a request for a pretrial hearing because he said it doesn't have merit. But a judge may decide to allow a hearing over Willougby's objections.

Sanderlin's attorneys submitted a report in February showing that he'd had low IQ scores of 64 to 85 in tests administered from age 8 to recently.

His mother acknowledged having at least two drinks a day and smoking a pack a day during her pregnancy, according to the report written by Dr. Timothy Hancock, a forensic clinical psychologist. Sanderlin, who grew up in Virginia, was born "shaking" and continued to shake for three days, raising concerns with the hospital staff that his mother had been using drugs or alcohol while pregnant with him.

At age 8, Sanderlin was committed to a hospital after his infant brother was found dead, the report by Hancock notes. Sanderlin had spontaneously confessed to smothering the infant. It was later thought that the baby's body was put in Sanderlin's bed after it was found next to his mother, who was drunk at the time and possibly passed out, Hancock wrote.

Lingering stigma?

"The result for Joseph, though, was that he had to live with the stigma and guilt of possibly having killed his infant brother," Hancock wrote.

Sanderlin was portrayed as the more aggressive attacker in Redman's death, during the trial of Byron Waring, his co-defendant who was sentenced to death in July 2007 by a Wake jury. Redman was stabbed in the abdomen multiple times, and police collected DNA that pointed to Sanderlin as the rapist. The two suspects had met Redman days earlier, and police think the men went to her West Raleigh apartment to rob her.

Waring's attorneys had also raised mental competency issues at his trial.

Executions have been on hold in North Carolina for more than a year because of legal issues regarding the method of execution.

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