I breathed a sigh of relief when I got home from school on Wednesday. Then, I made dinner and said hello to my two-dimensional Friends. In Texas, Delma Banks Jr. was doing the opposite.
Banks was saying farewell to his family and friends before eating his last meal and exhaling a few of his final breaths.
I thought about Banks last night, but he wasn’t thinking about me. We’ve never met, and in a thousand lifetimes we probably never will because of all the places in this world I have longed to visit, death row is not on my list. And for as long as I’ve been alive, death row is the only place Banks could have been found.
Banks is sitting on death row for the 20th year. He’s there for murdering a boy named Richard Whitlock in 1980.
The terrifying thing for Banks, his family and justice is there is a chance Banks didn’t kill Whitlock. There are plausible facts in favor of his innocence, which didn’t convince the jury at his trial, and then there are facts that were never presented for consideration.
During Banks’ trial two witnesses testified he bragged about killing Whitlock. The jury bought their testimonies.
However, their testimonies were tainted by hidden agendas, which damned Banks, who had no prior record, to an existence in a cell.
Testimonies by Robert Farr, a paid police informant, and Charles Cook, a two-time felon who was facing a third felony for arson, helped convict Banks.
To top it off, the jury was never informed of Farr’s arrangement with the police or of Cook’s prior record. This is information the prosecution should have turned over to the defense.
Cook even admitted in 1999 he lied during the trial and the police coerced his testimony from him.
One of the most obvious pieces of evidence in Banks’ defense was the fact that he was in Dallas, three hours away from the scene of the crime, when Whitlock was killed.
Still, Banks sits on death row.
The Texas judicial system has historically gone out of its way to show minorities that justice isn’t blind.
There is a chance the all-white jury convicted Banks because he was black and Whitlock was white and that the judge sentenced Banks to die for the same reasons.
Perhaps the courts could have made a more symbolic point about justice for minorities if they had executed Banks in February while the country celebrated Black History Month. I bet they considered it, but maybe they thought it would have been in poor form?
Banks’ appeal to the Texas Court of Appeals was denied by a vote of 6-3. Banks also petitioned his case to the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, but they refused to consider his petition because it was submitted a week late.
A week late? A man who may be innocent is about to die and the courts are worried about the timeliness of the petition? Banks has been in prison for two decades, what can another 20 days or even another 20 years hurt as long as the right person pays for the crime?
Banks has been on death row so long he has seen every one of the people who were there when he arrived be executed.
He’s the last one alive from the class of 1982 and maybe that’s a sign. An annoying, buzzing, 10-gallon neon sign that reads “Are you sure this guy killed that boy?”
In defense of the courts, it was a week late. Baloney.
The Texas judicial system has been extremely expedient when it comes to shipping death row inmates out in pine boxes since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted the temporary halt on executions in 1977 with Gregg vs. Georgia.
In 1982, the United States became the first country in the world to use lethal injection which just so happens to be Texas’s preferred capital punishment cocktail.
Sometimes being fast and first isn’t so great.
However, Banks would’ve been helping to celebrate a milestone as the 300th person executed in Texas since 1982.
The 11th person executed in Texas since the beginning of the year.
The NAACP is up in arms over the idea Banks may be innocent. They should be and I am not surprised.
What does surprise me is why the level of attention Banks’ case is receiving has only intensified recently. Didn’t anybody besides a few prison guards and his family remember he was sitting on death row, possibly innocent?
It truly does not pay to be fashionably late in a situation like this one.
Two weeks ago the U.S. Supreme Court finally handed down a ruling that criticized courts in Texas for ignoring evidence of racial bias in a death penalty case.
Three federal court judges and former F.B.I. director William Sessions have pleaded with the high court to stop the execution because almost all avenues for appeal are exhausted. Banks’ only saving graces are the U.S. Supreme Court and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
And last night the Supreme Court came through. They granted a stay of execution in the 11th hour and now Banks, who has maintained his innocence all along, isn’t going die just so the courts can save face for a mistake made 20 years ago. Banks will not lay down to die leaving us to wonder if he was innocent. Wondering if justice had been miscarried.
Let the issues his case raised ensure that the 400th person saying goodbye to friends before eating the last meal and exhaling the last breath is guilty of more than being a minority, poorly represented at trial and frankly, another statistic.

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