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| Execution of killer is halted |
| By Philadelphia Inquirer |
| Published: 12/06/2004 |
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The Pennsylvania Supreme Court halted the execution of George Banks on Dec. 1, effectively voiding the third death warrant served against the man who murdered 13 people in 1982. One day before Banks was scheduled to die for the Wilkes-Barre killings, the court ordered a lower court to determine whether Banks, a 62-year-old former prison officer, is mentally competent. The amount of legal preparation required would make it impossible to hold such a hearing before the execution warrant, signed by Gov. Rendell in October, expires at midnight tonight, state officials said. "There is no execution now," Susan McNaughton, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Corrections, said. Since Pennsylvania brought back the death penalty in 1978, governors have signed 293 death warrants (many individuals have more than one), according to the Department of Corrections. Only three executions have been carried out. Though a few of those death warrants have been voided by exonerations or a reprieve, the vast majority have resulted in seemingly endless stays. Some legal observers say that illustrates how difficult it is to carry out the death penalty, especially in older cases with more questions about whether a defendant received a fair trial and adequate legal representation. Of the 225 individuals on death row, more than half have been there more than 10 years, and many have spent 15 years awaiting execution. Andrew A. Chirls, chancellor-elect of the Philadelphia Bar Association, said that Pennsylvania's low rate of executions to warrants issued showed that death penalty cases were "fraught with potential for errors." The three inmates who were executed - the last in 1999 - essentially had chosen to stop fighting, Chirls said. He characterized their executions as "assisted-suicide cases." Banks' attorneys have been fighting his death sentence since it was given in 1983, appealing twice to the U.S. Supreme Court. Banks had been ruled mentally competent to stand trial for killing five of his children, four current or former girlfriends, and four others in an early-morning rampage on Sept. 25, 1982. Wielding a semiautomatic rifle, Banks shot most of his victims at close range as they slept. Defense attorneys had argued that executing Banks was unconstitutional because he suffered from severe mental illness. Banks has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. |
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