OKLAHOMA CITY ? The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday overturned three death sentences given to condemned killers who said they were mentally retarded.

The court voted to void the sentences and give the men life without parole. Two of the cases were from Creek County and one was from Comanche County.

“We are carefully reviewing these rulings as they are the result of relatively new Supreme Court law,” said Atty. Gen. Drew Edmondson. “These cases are the first to be overturned, so the court has placed the state in truly uncharted waters.”

Edmondson was critical of the court’s rules, saying they essentially did not allow the state to respond to the defendant’s appeal.

He said he would ask lawmakers to pass legislation so “the state’s position can be appropriately presented and murderers who have lawfully been found guilty by a jury, found mentally competent by a jury and sentenced to death cannot use a court rule to escape punishment for their crimes.”

In the Comanche County case, the appeals court reversed the death sentence handed Maximo L. Zalazar, convicted for the 1987 stabbing death of Jennifer Prill during a burglary.

The case went back to district court after the U.S. Supreme Court decreed that states cannot execute mentally retarded killers.

A jury found that Zalazar was not mentally retarded, but the appeals court said it did not “have confidence” in the jury’s decision.

The opinion was critical of Zalazar’s attorney for failing to challenge the scientific validity of mental retardation tests of the state.

“Although the trial court concluded in its last finding that the evidence in question would not have impacted the verdict rendered, we do not share that same confidence,” the court said.

Judge Gary Lumpkin issued a dissenting opinion in each case.

The court also overturned the death verdicts issued by juries in Sapulpa for Robert Wayne Lambert, convicted of two counts of murder in a case in which the victims were burned to death in a car, and Darrin Lynn Pickens, convicted of killing a convenience store clerk.

Lambert and Scott Hain were accused of abducting Michael Houghton and Laura Lee Sanders, placing them in the trunk of a car and setting it on fire. Hain was executed in 2003 for his part in the murders.

In the Lambert case, the appeals court said the state did not contest arguments that the defendant was mentally retarded until after the Supreme Court ruling.

It said the state largely failed to address claims of deficits in Lambert’s adaptive functioning.

Pickens was convicted for the 1990 robbery and killing of clerk Tommy Lee Hayes at a convenience store near Sapulpa.

In that case, the appeals court held that the jury operated under the guidance of incorrect instructions from the trial judge and returned “a specious verdict.”

“The record of the proceedings in this case supports petitioner’s claims that he proved, by a preponderance of the evidence, he is mentally retarded,” the appeals court said.