Washington ? The Supreme Court is back in the thick of the death penalty debate, coming face-to-face with the effects of its own recent rulings on who can be executed and who decides that sentence.

The justices are confronting several capital punishment questions: whether juveniles should be executed, what to do about poor performances by defense lawyers and whether juries rather than judges should have sentenced scores of death row inmates.

The court has dealt before with all three subjects, but not with finality.

Some of the most dramatic recent rulings came last year. The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded murderers and said that juries, not judges, must decide issues that determine if a particular case warrants the death penalty.

Both decisions have led to lower-court fights and set the stage for another round of high court rulings.