Topeka ? Sedgwick County’s top prosecutor wants legislators to delay reviving the state’s death penalty law, but a key senator dismissed her concerns Wednesday as “baloney.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee plans to have three days of hearings next week on capital punishment legislation, including a bill that is a response to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in December striking down the 1994 law as unconstitutional.

But Sedgwick County Dist. Atty. Nola Foulston warned her county’s legislators in a letter Tuesday that lawmakers should wait to see whether the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the Kansas court’s decision. Atty. Gen. Phill Kline has promised such an appeal.

“There is a grave problem,” Foulston wrote. “Any attempt by the Kansas Legislature to ‘repair’ the Kansas Death Penalty Act could be the death knell for review by the United States Supreme Court.”

Such an outcome would be a “travesty,” Foulston said, because death sentences imposed previously on defendants could not be reimposed.

But Senate committee Chairman John Vratil, R-Leawood, an attorney, said he doubted legislative action would influence the U.S. Supreme Court.

“That’s baloney,” he said. “I certainly don’t plan to rush into it, but there’s no reason in the world to hold up.”

The Kansas court struck down the death penalty law because of a provision governing how juries weigh evidence for and against imposing a death sentence. The law says that if the evidence is about equal, the jury must recommend a death sentence.

Vratil’s committee also plans to consider legislation to strengthen provisions in the death penalty law to prevent the execution of mentally retarded defendants. An advisory panel of judges and lawyers has said the protections aren’t strong enough, in light of a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision.

Also, Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, is sponsoring a bill to wipe the death penalty off the statute books.

Donna Schneweis, a leader of the Kansas Coalition Against the Death Penalty, favors Haley’s bill even though the Kansas court’s ruling left the state with no capital punishment, although the language is still part of state law. She said her discussions with attorneys and other experts have persuaded her that the U.S. Supreme Court won’t consider Kline’s appeal.

“There’s going to be a clamor to fix the law,” she said. “Kansas should just get rid of it.”