Death to the death penalty!Pull
Death to the death penalty!
Pull the Plug
By BOB HERBERT
…Here are just some of the problems. There is no good evidence that Mr. Banks, who was accused of killing a 16-year-old boy in a small town in Texas in 1980, is guilty. A complete reading of the record, including facts uncovered during his appeals, shows that he is most likely innocent.
There is irrefutable evidence of gross prosecutorial misconduct. The key witnesses against Mr. Banks were hard-core drug addicts who had much to gain from lying. One was a paid informer, and the other was a career felon who was told that a pending arson charge would be dropped if he performed "well" while testifying against Mr. Banks. The special incentives given to the two men for their testimony were improperly concealed by prosecutors. Both witnesses have since recanted.
And, as in so many capital cases, the race issue runs through this one like a fatal virus. Mr. Banks, who had no prior criminal record and has steadfastly proclaimed his innocence, is black. The victim, the prosecutors and all the carefully selected jurors were white.
…A Columbia University study released last year documented extraordinarily high percentages of death penalty cases that had been tainted by "egregiously incompetent" defense lawyers, by police officers and prosecutors who had suppressed exculpatory evidence, by jurors who had been misinformed about the law, and by judges and jurors who were biased.
A study on race and the death penalty in the U.S. that is being released today by Amnesty International notes the following:
"Since 1976, blacks have been six to seven times more likely to be murdered than whites, with the result that blacks and whites are the victims of murder in about equal numbers. Yet 80 percent of the more than 840 people put to death in the U.S.A. since 1976 were convicted of crimes involving white victims, compared to the 13 percent who were convicted of killing blacks."
The Amnesty report asserts, correctly, that studies have consistently found that the criminal justice system "places a higher value on white life than on black life."
…"The prosecutors in this case concealed important impeachment material from the defense. In addition, the district court found, and the court of appeals agreed, that Mr. Banks received ineffective assistance from his lawyer, at least in the penalty phase of his trial."
None of these issues mattered to the state of Texas, which was ready and oh-so-willing to kill this man at 6 p.m. on March 12, and is still ready and willing to do so.
