WASHINGTON (AP) --
The Supreme Court on Wednesday stopped Texas from executing its 300th inmate since capital punishment resumed in the United States in 1977, granting a dramatic last-minute stay to condemned killer Delma Banks.
Banks' claims that he was wrongly convicted of a murder 23 years ago were backed by three former federal judges.
His lawyers told justices that he was poorly represented at trial, that prosecutors improperly kept blacks off the jury, and that testimony from two prosecution witnesses was shaky. Banks is black, his victim was white and the jury was all-white.
The court issued the stay, without comment, about 10 minutes before the 44-year-old was to be put to death for the 1980 murder of 16-year-old Richard Wayne Whitehead, a co-worker at a restaurant. Banks shot Whitehead for the hell of it" after a night of drinking, according to testimony Banks gave at his trial.
Banks has been on death row 22 years, longer than Whitehead was alive.
One of the three former federal judges supporting the Supreme Court intervention was former FBI Director William Sessions, who submitted a brief to the high court in which he cited uncured constitutional errors" in Banks' case.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this week refused to block Banks' execution, and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles would not hear his plea because it was filed too late.
