COLUMBIA - Before the Legislature adjourns in June, state representatives say they plan to consider a bill already approved by senators that would allow some sex offenders to be put to death.

House approval is seemingly the last step before the bill, which already has the support of state Attorney General Henry McMaster and Gov. Mark Sanford, could become law. It has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Jim Harrison, R-Columbia, thinks it will likely have success.

House Majority Leader Jim Merrill, R-Daniel Island, said leaders are ready to open debate on the issue. "At first blush, I believe most people are inclined to be supportive," Mr. Merrill said. "But, like anything, we have to deal with the details."

The bill, OK'd by the Senate last month, sets mandatory minimum sentences and requires lifetime electronic monitoring for some sex offenders. An amendment given overwhelming approval also allows South Carolina prosecutors to seek the death penalty for anyone twice convicted of sexually molesting a child younger than 11.

Rep. R. Thayer Rivers Jr., D-Ridgeland, said he wasn't sure he would support the bill, but he won't necessarily speak against it either. "I don't plan on standing in the way of it," Mr. Rivers said, adding that he's primarily concerned with how much the measure would cost taxpayers, given the number of appeals pursued in most death penalty cases.

In 1993, Duke University researchers found that the typical capital case cost North Carolina taxpayers $2 million more than a life sentence.

Rep. Fletcher Smith, D-Greenville, said the bill won't meet constitutional standards. In 1977, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty can't be used in cases involving adult rapes, but the high court has never weighed in on the execution of child molesters.

"No one is ever going to be executed under this bill," said David Bruck, a death penalty opponent and former South Carolina defense attorney who now runs a capital trial defense clinic at Washington & Lee University law school. "People are so horrified by a particular crime, and they want to wrap themselves in the feeling of indignation that the public understandably experiences."

Mr. Bruck also fears the measure might not be the deterrent lawmakers want.

"The last message you want to give a child sexual predator is that, once he's given in to an urge to sexually molest a child, is that he might as well kill the child," he said.