WASHINGTON (AP) For the second time in two months, the Supreme Court postponed an imminent execution and agreed to hear a convicted killer"s appeal.

The court said yesterday that it will decide whether a man accused of the rape and murder of a 17-year-old boy got an unbiased lawyer and a fair trial.

Walter Mickens Jr. was assigned a lawyer who, only days earlier, had represented the dead boy on an unrelated assault charge. The same Newport News, Va., judge handled both cases.

The Sixth Amendment not only guarantees the right to a lawyer, it guarantees a lawyer without a conflict of interest, Mickens" appeals lawyers said.

"It"s inconceivable that such a violation of ethics and procedure could be allowed to go forward unchecked, and now the Supreme Court will address that," said Mickens lawyer Robert J. Wagner.

Mickens was scheduled to die today. He now has a reprieve at least until next fall, when the high court is expected to hear his case.

Also next fall, the court will hear a separate death row appeal testing whether it is cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone with mental retardation.

In that North Carolina case, the justices stopped the execution of Ernest McCarver hours before he was scheduled to die last month.

In recent years the justices have seen 80 or 90 last-minute appeals from death row inmates annually. The court does not keep statistics on how often the justices agree to step in, but death penalty opponents said it happens rarely.

It takes the "yes" votes of at least four justices for the court to hear a case. Those votes are secret.

The nine-member court has at least a five-member majority in favor of the death penalty in general, but many members of the current court have not been explicit about their views.

Last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made what were apparently her most specific public remarks on the death penalty. She did not express outright opposition, but said she would support a moratorium on imposition of the death penalty then under consideration in Maryland.

"I have yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on eve-of-execution stay applications in which the defendant was well represented at trial," Ginsburg said during an April 9 lecture in Washington.

"People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty," she added later.

Ginsburg has gone on record as saying she would have granted last-minute stays, or delays, in capital cases.

In Mickens" case, his lawyer allegedly failed to cross-examine witnesses aggressively at trial, and did little to portray the victim"s own background, Mickens" new lawyers contend.

The boy, Timothy Hall, had been arrested for allegedly shoving his mother during an argument. Lawyer Bryan Saunders was appointed to represent Hall on that charge.

After Mickens was arrested, Saunders was appointed as his lawyer. Saunders has said he felt no conflict of interest and believed his duty to Hall ended when he learned his client was dead.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this year that Mickens got a fair trial, and refused to order a new one.