The high court this summer abolished the death penalty for the mentally retarded and struck down capital punishment laws in several states. The court has four death row cases to consider when it opens a new term next week. All focus on the mechanics of imposing the death penalty, not major constitutional issues.

Justices added the fourth case Tuesday, involving a man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her son. The court also said it would look at a mob murder appeal that could affect death cases.

The court, in announcing new cases to be heard, dodged one that asked whether it is unconstitutional to put to death juvenile killers.

Three justices said over the summer they want the court to review that subject. The term promises to be less dramatic than last year's, when justices declared it unconstitutional to execute mentally retarded murderers and said that juries -- not judges -- must decide issues that determine if a particular case warrants the death penalty.

"Now the fights are on the margins, not at the heart of the death penalty," said Thomas Goldstein, who represents a death row inmate whose separate case will be heard by the court next month.

"There are no blockbusters," said Kent Scheidegger, of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation.

In the death penalty case chosen Tuesday, justices said they will consider whether Robert Frederick Garceau -- and potentially more defendants in western states -- falls under a law that limits appeals. Garceau had filed some paperwork before the law took effect in 1996, and a federal appeals court said he was exempt from it.

Garceau was convicted of stabbing his girlfriend and her 14-year-old son in 1984 and burying their bodies in the backyard of one of his drug dealing partners. He was later convicted in the murder of that partner as well. Accomplices said he feared his girlfriend was going to tell police about his narcotics operation.

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers nine western states, overturned his conviction and death sentence. Separately, the Supreme Court agreed to reconsider rules for defendants in federal court who want to claim that their original lawyers performed poorly. The case would affect federal death row prisoners, who typically begin a second round of appeals once their direct appeals are exhausted.

The court will consider the case of Joseph Massaro, whom prosecutors describe as a "soldier" in the Luchese organized crime family who controlled an extortion ring involving Long Island topless bars, gambling and loansharking.

Massaro was sentenced to life in prison for the 1990 killing of a mob partner in a dispute over gambling profits. Prosecutors introduced new evidence three days into the trial. On appeal, Massaro's new lawyer unsuccessfully claimed that that the evidence -- a bullet -- should not have been allowed.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Massaro had lost his chance to lodge new arguments about the effectiveness of his first lawyer. Other federal appeals courts have decided similar cases differently.

The Supreme Court could decide later to hear the case of a Kentucky man sentenced to death for abducting, sodomizing and killing a gas station attendant when he was 17. The case is one of several involving juvenile murderers pending at the court.

"It is still a year to watch the court closely," said Steven Hawkins, executive director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

The other death cases to be argued at the court this fall involve:

--Racial discrimination in the selection of a jury in a Texas capital case.

--Whether it was double jeopardy for a Pennsylvania defendant to get a death sentence in a second trial, after a court threw out the life sentence he got in his first trial.

--If it's too late for a Tennessee death row inmate to pursue appeals on new developments.

The cases accepted Tuesday are Woodford v. Garceau, 01-1862, and Massaro v. United States, 01-1559.