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strongest laws is Nebraska's, said
Jerry Soucie, a lawyer with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy,
an agency that represents poor
defendants in capital cases. 

The law, which was urged by advocates for the mentally retarded and the
Roman Catholic Church, says that
a person with an I.Q. below 70 is presumed to be mentally retarded, and
requires a judge to vacate a death
sentence imposed before the law was passed if the judge finds by a
"preponderance of the evidence" that the
person was mentally retarded. 

After the law was passed, 2 of the 10 men then on death row had their
sentences commuted to life in prison.
One had an I.Q. of 68, the other 65. 

Illinois does not have a law prohibiting the execution of the mentally
retarded, but it was his mental
deficiencies that saved the life of Anthony Porter. Mr. Porter, who was
sentenced to die for the murder of two
people, has an I.Q. of 51. He was 48 hours away from execution when the
State Supreme Court granted him
a reprieve so that his mental retardation could be investigated. The
reprieve gave investigators time to uncover
evidence of Mr. Porter's innocence, and after spending 16 years on death
row, he was exonerated and
released from prison last year.