Salina ? The attorney for a suspect in a double homicide in Salina is asking a judge to rule that the state’s death penalty law is unconstitutional.

Attorney Richard Ney on Wednesday asked Saline County District Court Judge Rene Young to strike the death penalty in the case against Terrence J. Watson. He is charged with two counts of capital murder in the Sept. 26, 2008 shooting deaths of Taryn Dechant and Ernest Jones Jr., both 22, at their Salina apartment.

Ney argued in his motion that the state’s death penalty has largely been enforced in cases where the victims were white, particularly white females.

Prosecutor Steven Karrer, an assistant Kansas attorney general, responded that Ney has not proven that the state discriminated in Watson’s case.

Young took the motion under advisement.