ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia lawmakers tried again Wednesday to allow juries to recommend a death sentence without a unanimous vote, this time pushing the plan through by adding it to an otherwise popular proposal.

The House voted 112-55 to soften Georgia's capital punishment rules by allowing judges to consider a death sentence even if one or two jurors vote against it. It now returns to the Senate.

The measure's Republican sponsors described it as a way to prevent death penalty opponents from sabotaging capital punishment cases with one or two "no" votes.

"It raises the standard for better justice in Georgia," said House Majority Whip Barry Fleming, who has championed the bill into the run-up to his campaign for Georgia's 8th Congressional District.

It faced fierce opposition from some Republican attorneys who warned it would put sacred life-or-death decisions in the hands of a government official instead of a jury.

"This would take away the right of the people to make a decision about a death penalty verdict and transfer that right to a judge who is the representative of the government," said state Rep. Mark Hatfield, R-Waycross, a former prosecutor.

"You're taking away the right of that jury, which is sacrosanct."

Other Republican attorneys were just as blunt in their criticism.

State Rep. Ed Lindsey, R-Atlanta, said it would rob the state of its "devotion and respect for the people." And state Rep. Robert Mumford, R-Conyers, called it a "radical and unprecedented attempt to weaken this time honored process."

A similar cast of characters spoke against the bill last year, when it passed by a 106-65 vote after about three hours of debate. But it was scuttled by a Senate panel in the last days of the legislative session.

Fleming, R-Harlem, has quietly worked behind the scenes since then. He waited for a Senate measure that opened up the same legal section, and pounced when a plan that gave prosecutors more leeway to seek life without parole reached the House.

When the measure came up in a key House panel Wednesday morning, he swiftly combined it with his plan. Fleming had powerful allies, as was apparent by the other lawmaker who spoke in support of the proposal.

In a rare trip to the well, House Speaker Glenn Richardson said he had blocked the idea in 2005 and 2006 but changed his mind last year. The turning point: A 10-2 Florida jury verdict in March 2007 that sentenced John Couey to death for the murder of 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford.

"If you need further convincing, perhaps you ought to go talk to the family of Jessica Lunsford," he said. "If that trial had taken place in Georgia ... he would not get the death penalty, because Georgia requires a unanimous jury verdict."

Richardson, also an attorney, acknowledged that Georgia has required unanimous jury verdicts in death penalty cases for two centuries.

"But I say this planet is a lot meaner place than it was 200 years ago," he said. "There weren't people burying little girls alive."