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| Supreme Court to review death penalty issues |
| By The Miami Herald |
| Published: 12/08/2003 |
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The Supreme Court resumes its ongoing review of the death penalty today in a case that presents an unusually broad opportunity for reform. The justices intervened in Delma Banks Jr.'s legal struggles in dramatic fashion last spring, agreeing to hear his appeal just minutes before he was to be strapped to a gurney and executed in Huntsville, Texas. He'd already eaten his last meal. His case, which has bounced around state and federal appeals courts for 23 years, is fraught with questions about how both trial and appeals courts assure that mistakes aren't made when a defendant's life is on the line. Banks' attorneys will tell the court that prosecutors hid evidence and systematically eliminated all blacks from the jury. They'll say that before his one-day trial, Banks' first lawyer interviewed no witnesses and failed to review the prosecution's evidence. He did not investigate Banks' social history or school records prior to the penalty phase of the trial. And the appeals courts never gave those lapses the attention they deserved, Banks' lawyers will argue. Banks case is unusual, in that the justices got involved literally at the last minute. Each year, dozens of death-row inmates make 11th-hour appeals to the high court to stop their executions, and only a few are granted. There is little question about the justices' general acceptance of the death penalty. But over the past few terms, the court has been reshaping the nature of capital punishment by ordering changes in the way defendants reach death row. The justices, led by newer members of the court who are still shaping their view of capital punishment, have outlawed executions of the mentally retarded; required juries rather than judges to impose death sentences; blasted racial jury-stacking in capital cases and heightened the standards for defense lawyers in death penalty cases. Banks' case involves several of those issues and others, leading some experts to believe the justices may take another broad swipe at the existing capital system in their ruling. Banks was convicted in 1980 of killing a 16-year-old former co-worker at a fast-food restaurant. Two witnesses said they saw Banks with the victim the night he was killed, and later spotted him driving the victim's car. Prosecutors leaned heavily on those witnesses during the trial, and they were instrumental in helping to convict Banks. But both later recanted significant portions of their testimony, and one admitted years later to accepting money from prosecutors for his testimony. Banks appealed his conviction, saying prosecutors hid information about the witnesses from his lawyer, and that his lawyer had not done the required work to defend him. A state judge and a federal district court judge sided with Banks, finding that the errors at his trial likely resulted in his conviction. But the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision, saying none of the problems with Banks' trial was singly significant enough to vacate his conviction. The appeals court even acknowledged that Banks had received ineffective legal representation, but said it would probably not have made a difference at his trial. Already, the 5th Circuit has been chastised by the court for giving short shrift to death row inmates' appeals. In last year's ruling about racially stacked juries, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the appeals court had used too high a standard in determining whether errors in a capital trial were egregious enough to grant full appeals. Banks' case has attracted national attention because Banks was scheduled to become the 300th Texas inmate executed since the high court reinstated the death penalty. |
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