Say what?!
Posted on 08/29/2009 2:37:01 AM PDT by Born Conservative
HARRISBURG – The competency of convicted mass murderer George Banks will once again be in the hands of a Luzerne County judge, but not the one who’s now twice had his rulings overturned by the Supreme Court.
The state Supreme Court has ordered a new competency hearing for Banks, 67, convicted of fatally shooting 13 people, including five of his own children, in Wilkes-Barre and Jenkins Township on Sept. 25, 1982.
He was last scheduled to be executed in December 2004, but a stay was granted after his attorneys filed a motion arguing he was too mentally ill to understand he was facing execution.
Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan ruled Banks incompetent to be executed last year. During that three-day competency hearing, Conahan ruled that Banks suffers from a severe mental illness that causes him to be highly delusional, rendering him incapable of understanding his conviction or death sentence. Banks has been on Death Row for 26 years.
The state’s highest court ruled on Thursday that Conahan violated its directive that he provide an “autonomous judicial expression” when he issued an order in September 2008 finding that Banks was too mentally ill to be executed.
Rather than author his own opinion, Conahan simply signed a document that had been prepared by the defense that stated the defense’s conclusions.
“Conahan’s adoption of appellee’s proposed findings was doubly improper to the extent that the document includes finding as to questions that were well beyond the scope of the hearing,” the court wrote.
Banks’ attorney Al Flora Jr. said the ruling “does not make a lot of sense to me.”
“There are many instances where trial judges have adopted findings of fact presented by defense attorneys or prosecutors,” Flora said. “To me, is rather unusual to see something like this.”
This was the second time the Supreme Court overturned a Conahan decision on the matter. It also did so in 2006.
Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll said she was “pleased” with the ruling announced Friday.
“All along it has been our position that he is competent to be executed and we presented expert evidence to that effect at the previous hearing and we’ll present that to the newly appointed judge,” Musto Carroll said.
Conahan, who has been removed from judicial duty while he awaits a federal trial for his role in the county’s juvenile detention center scandal, will not hear the matter. The Supreme Court has ordered Luzerne County President Judge Chester B. Muroski to assign a sitting county judge to hold a new competency hearing “as expeditiously as possible.”
Flora said his next step for him is to contact Luzerne County commissioners to schedule a meeting to discuss funding for the hearing. He did not have an estimated cost in mind. TO LEARN MORE
To see the Supreme Court’s order, log on to: http://www.pacourts.us/OpPosting/Supreme/out/578cap-remand.pdf
Heaven knows insanity was disreputable enough, long ago;
but now that the lawyers have got to cutting every gallows
rope and picking every prison lock with it, it is become a
sneaking villainy that ought to hang and keep on hanging
its sudden possessors until evil-doers should conclude
that the safest plan was to never claim to have it until
they came by it legitimately.
The very calibre of the people the lawyers most frequently
try to save by the insanity subterfuge ought to laugh the
plea out of the courts, one would think.
MARK TWAIN
- “Unburlesquable Things,” The Galaxy Magazine, July 1870
This man was sane enough to pull the trigger of a gun and murder people.
Let him rot in jail or go to the gallows.
George Banks should have been put to death a long time ago. The fact that this is dragging on is another indication of how our government cannot function properly, even for those tasks assigned it in the constitution.
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