Topeka ? Some legislators and prosecutors worry that the Legislature is moving too quickly in trying to resurrect the state’s death penalty law after the Kansas Supreme Court struck it down.

Johnson County Dist. Atty. Paul Morrison said Wednesday that trying now to fix a flaw identified by the Kansas court would be counterproductive. He said legislative action would make it less likely that the U.S. Supreme Court would review the Kansas court’s decision.

Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, said, “I want to be cautious” in dealing with the death penalty before hearing from the U.S. Supreme Court.

Their comments came as the Senate Judiciary Committee began reviewing the law and the Kansas court’s decision. Chairman John Vratil, R-Leawood, said the panel would have hearings later this month.

The Kansas court declared the 1994 capital punishment law unconstitutional last month because of a provision on how juries weigh evidence for and against imposing a death sentence. The provision says if a jury finds the evidence about equal, it must impose death, something the court’s 4-3 majority said represented cruel and unusual punishment.

The decision invalidated the death sentences of six convicted killers. A seventh capital murder defendant, Gary W. Kleypas, had his sentence overturned in 2001 and was awaiting resentencing.

Atty. Gen. Phill Kline has promised to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. A new death penalty law can’t be applied to the men retroactively, so the U.S. Supreme Court represents the state’s only chance to put them back on death row.

Morrison said the Legislature should wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider Kline’s appeal.

“I think it has a chance,” he said. “It’s not a long shot.”

Kline spokesman Whitney Watson said the attorney general wanted legislators to reinstate capital punishment. But Watson also acknowledged that doing so could affect Kline’s appeal.

“The Kansas Supreme Court has put the Legislature in a terrible position,” he said.

Meanwhile, Vratil said his committee would tackle another issue: strengthening language designed to prevent the execution of mentally retarded defendants.

Under Kansas law, to avoid execution, a defendant’s mental retardation must be severe enough to prevent the defendant from understanding that his or her conduct is criminal. Also, a person’s functioning must have been impaired at birth or in childhood.

But a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision declared the execution of any mentally retarded defendant unconstitutional, and an advisory committee of judges and lawyers concluded in 2003 that state law needed revising.

Vratil said his committee also would review a bill striking the capital punishment law from the books.

Bill Lucero, an anti-death penalty activist from Topeka, said he and other capital punishment opponents didn’t see a need for such a bill with the Kansas court’s ruling. Legislators, he said, should do nothing.

But the repeal bill’s sponsor, Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, said he wanted to eliminate the “stigma” of being a death penalty state.

Schmidt said considering any death penalty proposal would spark a discussion about both eliminating capital punishment and expanding its use.

“There is a large potential for unintended consequences,” he said.