The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last Monday reinstated the death penalty for a man convicted of robbing a St. Louis bank and murdering a guard.
The full court ruled that Billie Jerome Allen's death sentence was constitutional, rejecting his attorneys' claims that the grand jury's indictment of Allen failed to properly charge him with crimes punishable by death.
Allen and another man, Norris Holder, were convicted of killing guard Richard Heflin, 46, in a 1997 holdup at the Lindell Bank & Trust branch at 6900 Clayton Avenue. Their getaway van crashed and burned in Forest Park.
The case has been through a series reversals. A three-judge panel of the appeals court upheld the death sentence for both men in a 2-1 vote in 2001, but the U.S. Supreme Court overturned those rulings in 2002 and sent the case back for further review.
In February 2004, in another 2-1 vote, an appeals court panel vacated the sentence, but in May 2004 the appeals court reversed that decision and decided to have all of the court's judges review the case.
Holder remains sentenced to death, though he still has pending appeals.