Gov. Michael Easley signed into law the bill that forbids...

Gov. Michael Easley signed into law the bill that forbids the execution of defendants with mental retardation. On July 24, Senate approved execution ban on mentally retarded. The new law also applies to those currently on death row and to capital cases that begin after October 1, though current death row inmates would have several months to seek hearings on the issue. The law was sent from House on June 16 after final approval 64-44. In that occasion Rep. Wilma Sherrill, R-Buncombe said: "If I could speak to daddy tonight, he would say, 'If the person that murdered me was mentally incompetent, don't kill him,". Sherrill, whose father was killed in 1981 at a Yadkin County tobacco barn, said: "I don't want blood on my hands," she said after the debate. "... It wouldn't bring my father back." On April 23, the State Senate approved legislation night to ban executions of the mentally retarded. The legislation, approved in a 31-18 vote, would ban the execution of anyone with an I.Q. of 70 or less. It would require that a defendant exhibited evidence of mental retardation prior to the crime. "We do not now in North Carolina subject to capital punishment anyone who is under the age of 17," said Sen. Frank Ballance, D-Warren, the bill's sponsor. "A mentally retarded person has a mental age of 12 or under." Critics of the legislation continued to question whether someone could try to fake being mentally retarded, despite the safeguards. On June 22, Sen . Frank Ballance, D-Warren, the legislature's most vocal death-penalty opponent spoke after members of a House committee made big changes to a bill to spare mentally retarded killers. He said the House version would still ban the execution of the mentally retarded, but it makes a pretrial hearing on a defendant's mental state optional rather than mandatory.