Soxplosion Posted March 12, 2003 Share Posted March 12, 2003 Today, a true tragedy is taking place. The state of Texas is going to give an innocent man a lethal shot and then they are going to celebrate the fact that this man was the 300th person theyve murdered since the death penalty was revived in the state in 1982. Those trigger happy Texans dont have a care in the world for justice or fairness and they dont care that tonight at 7 o'clock (Im on the east coast so it might be 7:00 Texas time but either way this is going to happen today) an innocent man will die at their hand. And years from now the true murderers wont remember the completely corrupt trial or even Banks name, theyll just remember the number of people who went before him. Two hundred and ninety nine. In 1980, the black Delma Banks was accused of murdering a white teenager named Richard Whitehead. His trial went wrong from the start. First, he was given an all white jury. Texas had laws outlawing any minorities from jury duty. Then it was proven that at the time of the murder, Banks was in Texas, 3 hours away from Nash, scene of the murder. And the two major testimonies were based on the words of two drug addicts. One was a paid informant, the other was told that if he performed well against Banks he would get off a recent arson charge. If Ive correctly assumed the time Delma Banks now has three minutes to live. Then yet another innocent man will die in this tragedy. So from this whole fiasco, weve got two innocent dead men, two free druggies and a free murder whos sitting in his nice cozy house somewhere snickering about our own wrongdoing. I truly hope the court stops this executiong and all executions for that matter but that likely wont happen. In this time where most of our country is worrying about evils done thousands of miles away, I just thought some light should be shined on an evil committed right here at home. Long live Delma Banks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
clujer420 Posted March 13, 2003 Share Posted March 13, 2003 Maybe the system isn't as f***ed up as we think... --------------------- Supreme Court Stops 300th Texas Execution Published March 12, 2003, 6:00 PM CST WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Wednesday stopped Texas from executing its 300th inmate since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977, granting a dramatic last-minute stay to condemned killer Delma Banks. Banks' claims that he was wrongly convicted of a murder 23 years ago were backed by three former federal judges. His lawyers told justices that he was poorly represented at trial, that prosecutors improperly kept blacks off the jury, and that testimony from two prosecution witnesses was shaky. Banks is black, his victim was white and the jury was all-white. The court issued the stay, without comment, about 10 minutes before the 44-year-old was to be put to death for the 1980 murder of 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead, a co-worker at a restaurant. Banks shot Whitehead "for the hell of it" after a night of drinking, according to testimony Banks gave at his trial. Banks has been on death row 22 years, longer than Whitehead was alive. One of the three former federal judges supporting the Supreme Court intervention was former FBI Director William Sessions, who submitted a brief to the high court in which he cited "uncured constitutional errors" in Banks' case. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this week refused to block Banks' execution, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles would not hear his plea because it was filed too late. The majority of last-minute death row appeals are rejected by the Supreme Court, although justices have stopped a handful of executions in the past few years. Last year, the justices blocked executions in Florida, Tennessee and Texas. The Texas inmate who received a stay, Thomas Miller-El, won his Supreme Court appeal last month. The court ruled that Miller-El, who is black, deserved a new chance to press his claim that prosecutors stacked his jury with whites and death penalty supporters. The stay in Banks case will remain in effect until the court decides whether to review his case. No justices noted objections to the reprieve. Prosecutors and the victim's family have insisted Banks received a fair trial. "All these articles about poor Delma, poor Delma and how much of a raw deal he got," said Larry Whitehead, the victim's father, "stopping a youngster's life at 16 years old is a raw deal." Sessions and others had told the court in a filing that the claims raised in the appeal "go to the very heart of the effective functioning of the capital punishment system." Texas accounts for more than one-third of the 835 executions in the United States since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. Virginia has the second-highest total, with 87. On Tuesday, murderer Bobby Glen Cook became No. 299 since Texas resumed capital punishment in 1982. It was the 10th execution this year in Texas, which is on a pace to top the record 40 lethal injections carried out in 2000. ---------------------- A stay of execution...his lucky day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soxplosion Posted March 13, 2003 Author Share Posted March 13, 2003 Thank you God. Justice has been done. America and Texas did the right thing today. Now we can all sleep easy. Now this man deserves a pardon. Yet even if he gets it, nothing can make up for 23 lost years of life. His story is a sad one anyway you look at it... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YASNY Posted March 13, 2003 Share Posted March 13, 2003 Banks shot Whitehead "for the hell of it" after a night of drinking, according to testimony Banks gave at his trial. Banks may not have gotten a fair trial, but this hardly sounds like someone that deserves a pardon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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