Texas set for 300th execution since revival of death penalty

LIVINGSTON, Texas- Convicted killer Delma Banks could become a historical footnote Wednesday night when he is scheduled to die by injection. He is in line to become the 300th Texas prisoner executed since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982.

"That would be a nice round number," Michael Dewayne Johnson said sarcastically. Johnson was scheduled to be No. 300 until he and another death row inmate got temporary reprieves last month.

In the first two months of this year, Texas put nine men to death and is on pace to break its record of 40 executions carried out in 2000. Last year, 33 inmates died by lethal injection.

"They're killing people every day almost, every week," says Johnson, condemned for the fatal shooting of a gas station attendant near Waco in 1995. "It's not shocking any more. Most people don't even know unless they're involved. There's just a vague mention of it in the paper."

The Texas total is more than one-third of all the executions in the nation since 1976, when the death penalty resumed under a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Clearly the path from death row to the death house in Texas has become shorter in recent years.

Almost 13 years passed between Charlie Brooks, execution No. 1 and Harold Lane, No. 100, in 1995. It took more than four years for Texas to get to No. 200, Earl Heiselbetz, in January 2000.

Now it will be just over three years to reach the 300th execution. If not Banks, then almost certainly one of 10 other convicts on the current schedule for lethal injections.

The accelerated pace is fueled mostly by changes in appeals procedures since the mid-1990s that have imposed stricter deadlines on court filings and allow appeals to be considered simultaneously in state and federal courts.

Also, as the death penalty has undergone court challenges over the past two-plus decades, there simply are fewer areas of appeal left.

So when the Supreme Court opens a new door on avoiding the death penalty _ such as last year's ruling barring execution of mentally retarded inmates _ prisoners swarm to it.

Sometimes it works. Gregory Van Alstyne, scheduled to be execution No. 298, received a reprieve last month by presenting a claim that he is mentally retarded.

Sometimes it doesn't. Richard Head Williams instead became No. 298 on Feb. 25 after unsuccessfully raising the same claim, among others.

The average time between conviction and execution is still more than 10 years, but many are now spending less time on death row. Williams waited less than six years after the contract killing of a wheelchair-bound woman in Houston.

Texas juries continue to show little reluctance to impose the death penalty. While nine men were executed in January and February, their cells didn't remain empty for long _ at least eight men were convicted and sent to death row in the same two months.

As Texas moves toward its 300th execution, capital punishment in the state and the nation is undergoing closer scrutiny by opponents and more attempts by lawmakers to slow the process.

Former Illinois Gov. George Ryan issued a blanket commutation of sentences for the nearly 170 inmates on Illinois' death row. Ryan was troubled that the number of men executed by Illinois since 1977 was exceeded by the number of condemned prisoners who were exonerated.

Ryan's move encouraged capital-punishment opponents to renew their attack on Texas.

"Texas not only is contradicting world _ and national _ trends on the death penalty, but it also regularly undermines international human rights standards and resolutions in so doing," Amnesty International, which opposed capital punishment in all instances, writes in a scathing report called: "Texas _ In a World of Its Own as 300th Execution Looms."

Opponents found other grounds to criticize the nation's most active capital-punishment program.

Last month, black inmate Thomas Miller-El won a new hearing in a federal appeals court after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed there may have been something amiss when Dallas County prosecutors eliminated potential jurors who were black and stacked the panel with death-penalty supporters, almost all of them white.

Then there's the case of Calvin Burdine, condemned by a Houston jury for the 1983 murder of his gay lover. A federal judge threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial after Burdine's court-appointed lawyer slept during portions of his trial.

Competent legal representation is a frequent theme in appeals from condemned prisoners. Banks has argued in appeals that his court-appointed trial attorney didn't provide adequate evidence to keep him off death row. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, among the nation's most death-penalty-friendly appellate courts, said there was other evidence to support the jury's decision, and it has refused to halt Banks' punishment.

Texas also has come under fire for executing foreign nationals who weren't allowed to contact their consulates for legal assistance when accused of murder, a violation of international agreements, execution foes say. Local prosecutors say foreigners are subject to Texas law and shouldn't have murdered while in the state.

Another controversy is the execution of prisoners who murdered when they were 17. Capital punishment opponents call them juveniles, although under state law the convicts are adults.

A bill pending in the Texas Legislature would let juries impose life without parole. Juries now choose between execution and a life sentence, but someone getting life can become eligible for parole after 40 years.

Another bill would put a moratorium on the death penalty in Texas and order a study of the whole issue. Gov. Rick Perry opposes the bill, calling it unnecessary.

"He thinks it's an appropriate punishment in the most heinous of crimes," said Perry's spokeswoman, Kathy Walt.

Any legislative action may be too late to save Banks or Bobby Cook from making the 45-mile drive from the Polunsky Unit's death row near Livingston to the death chamber in Huntsville.

Cook, condemned for the robbery and shooting death of a fisherman almost 10 years ago, has been rejected by the Supreme Court and was counting on a clemency petition to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

"That's like a hay bale thrown into the wind of a hurricane," he said of his chances for survival.

"I hate it. I hate the death penalty," Cook said. "All the people executed ... nobody knows who the person is. Three-hundred. That's all they're going to remember."

Banks has been on death row since 1980 for fatally shooting a 16-year-old Texarkana-area youth and stealing his car. But he is now more the exception than the norm in avoiding the executioner's needle in Texas for many years....or this one: "I hate it. I hate the death penalty," Cook said. "All the people executed ... nobody knows who the person is. Three-hundred. That's all they're going to remember."

GEEZ! 20 years the family's had to KNOW this pathogen was being supported with their tax dollar in or on his way to Huntsville.

Or this one: "I hate it. I hate the death penalty," Cook said. "All the people executed ... nobody knows who the person is. Three-hundred. That's all they're going to remember."

Cook hates the death penalty because he earned it and whines "all they're going to remember is a number". I'll bet the mother and father of the victim remember a HELL whole lot more than a number...

I did a Google News Search and found this. I haven't heard of this source before, but they are opposed to the Death Penalty. In Texas, if you can't do the time/DP, don't do the crime!

Somehow, I feel certain that they are leaving a lot of pertinent information out regarding the witnesses recanting their stories, and the four "strong supporters of the death penalty" petitioning for him to be taken off death row. Interesting. I'd like to find out what the real story is here. I bet he did it.

http://www.news-journal.com/news/newsfd/auto/feed/news/2003/03/06/1046928838.00353.1186.0839.html

03-06, State: Former judges, FBI director join effort to prevent inmate's death

By DAVID PASZTOR

AUSTIN — In six days, the state of Texas plans to strap a black man named Delma Banks to a gurney and execute him. If that happens, Banks could become the 300th inmate put to death since capital punishment resumed in 1982.

He might well be innocent.

Last-minute claims by condemned prisoners are not unusual when execution dates draw near. But in Banks' case, evidence that he was unjustly convicted is compelling enough that former U.S. District Judge and FBI Director William Sessions, joined by two other former federal judges and a former federal prosecutor, have filed court arguments calling Banks' conviction a potential miscarriage of justice and asking that his execution be stopped. All four are considered strong supporters of the death penalty.

"The questions presented in Mr. Banks' petition directly implicate the integrity of the administration of the death penalty in this country," the four men argue in a friend of the court brief. "The prosecutors in this case concealed important impeachment material from the defense."

In a flurry of last-minute appeals, Banks' lawyers are asking the U.S. Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Gov. Rick Perry to halt his execution set Wednesday. Evidence developed during years of appeals, they say, shows with remarkable clarity that Banks was unfairly convicted because witnesses lied and prosecutors withheld crucial evidence that support his claims of innocence.

Banks was convicted in 1980 of killing 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead in Nash, near Texarkana. No physical evidence connected Banks to the crime, and he was convicted largely on the testimony of two prosecution witnesses.

Since then, both of those men, along with several other prosecution witnesses, have recanted their testimony, said George Kendall, a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund who is representing Banks.

More importantly, Kendall said, he has found proof that Bowie County prosecutors knowingly allowed witnesses to commit perjury and did not turn over to the defense a key document that would have seriously undermined their star witnesses' testimony.

Neither the Bowie County prosecutor's office nor the assistant district attorney who helped prosecute Banks returned phone calls seeking comment.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, whose office is fighting Banks' federal appeal, will continue to press for his execution.

Kendall argues there is strong evidence that, at a minimum, Banks did not receive a fair trial.

Prosecutors did not tell the jury — or Banks' defense lawyer — that one of the two key witnesses was a paid police informant, Kendall said.

Farr's recantation was enough to convince a U.S. district judge in 2000 to order that Banks' death sentence be overturned. Three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, however, overruled that decision.

In addition to the state and federal appeals, Kendall has asked Perry to grant Banks a 30-day stay of execution, and is seeking clemency from the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.