Wednesday, March 12, 2003

stay of execution

As you have probably read elsewhere, the Supreme Court at the last minute (actually, the last 10 minutes) stayed the execution of Delma Banks in Texas. According to the AP story, Banks says that he was wrongly convicted; but the story also purports to quote his trial testimony as having been that he killed the victim "for the hell of it." This sounds very odd to me. It is, first of all, nearly impossible to believe that any defendant would take the stand in order to give such testimony. It is, furthermore, hard to understand how someone could say that he was wrongly convicted if he had so testified. And other things you can find by googling around on the phrases "Delma Banks" and "for the hell of it" suggest that this did not come from Banks's trial testimony. One would think that the AP could be more clear about such things.

posted by sam 9:21 PM 0 comments

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