Though Rep. Dave Ure, R-Kamas, still is working with legal advisers to draft a bill for the 2006 Legislature that would require the death penalty upon conviction for killing a child in connection with a "vicious" sexual crime, even he has his doubts that such a proposal is legally viable.

"Right now I'm not sure, constitutionally, I can do it," Ure said.

Ure began work on the bill in reaction to last May's kidnapping and sexual abuse of two Idaho children. The brother was found dead; the sister was recovered.

Joseph Edward Duncan III, who has a history of violence against children and failed mental health treatments, is charged with kidnapping and murder. Investigators suspect Duncan also killed three members of the children's family. Prosecutors will seek the death penalty.

"He had been charged with several other crimes across the United States," Ure said of Duncan. "He jumped bail and committed more crimes. I don't want that kind of person on the streets."

But experienced prosecutors say an automatic death penalty would run against a long trend of court rulings.

"The problem I'm having, according to the Supreme Court cases and Constitution, is that a verdict and sentence has to be handed out by a jury of his peers," Ure acknowledged.

The Summit County Republican hopes he can modify the bill, perhaps to make the execution the default penalty after a conviction for child sexual abuse and murder - unless the jury intervenes to change it to life imprisonment. The law, in any case, still would allow appeals, Ure said.

But the death default on a guilty verdict would take pressure off jurors to actively seek the death penalty, he said.

"The juries will often convict a person, but after conviction, they think, 'I don't want that guy's death on my shoulders.' Then they give him life."

Paul Boyden, director of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors, says existing Utah law already offers juries the choice of the death penalty option at the sentencing stage for heinous crimes, including rape and murdering children.

Most prosecutors are satisfied with Utah's death penalty law and juries' willingness to invoke it. They fear any modification would actually undermine it by opening it to more appeals, Boyden says.

"We will work with Rep. Ure to make sure the law is not weakened."

The American Civil Liberties Union Utah branch opposes any mandatory minimum sentencing law that takes discretion away from judges and juries.

"It's not news that we think that the death penalty is the ultimate deprivation of a person's civil rights," says Dani Eyer, the group's Utah director.

Ure's bill, however, actually might make it harder for Utah to execute criminals, she says.

"This would potentially create more problematic procedural issues for the state [in carrying out the death penalty]," Eyer says.