CRIME Mother of man on death row seeks reprieve

The execution date nears for the killer of 13 people.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- The mother of a man scheduled to die next week for a 1982 rampage that left 13 people dead -- including five of his own young children -- is seeking a last-minute reprieve as prison officials prepare to execute him.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against George E. Banks, 62, in June and his execution is scheduled for Dec. 2. Only three people have been executed in Pennsylvania in the past 42 years, the most recent in 1999.
Mental illness claimed
Lawyers for Banks' mother, Mary Yelland, say severe mental illness prevents him from making rational decisions about his case. They filed an appeal with the state Supreme Court on his behalf last week, the fourth time the state's highest court has reviewed the case. Another action was expected to be filed in Luzerne County on Wednesday.
"It's our position that he's not competent at this point in time to make those decisions," said defense attorney Al Flora Jr. of Wilkes-Barre.
Flora argues that "chronically psychotic" defendants such as Banks should not be executed because of the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment, just as the U.S. Supreme Court has said the mentally retarded cannot be executed.
"Given the documented length and severity of his mental illness, in light of evolving standards of decency, the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on execution of the insane and mentally retarded should be expanded to incorporate the severely mentally ill," the lawyers wrote in asking the state Supreme Court to issue a stay.
A phone message left Tuesday for Scott C. Gartley, the prosecutor who is handling the case for the Luzerne County District Attorney's Office, was not immediately returned. An office spokeswoman said prosecutors would file their response later.
Called appropriate
Gov. Ed Rendell, who began his political career as Philadelphia's district attorney, called Banks' death warrant "very, very appropriate."
"When I campaigned I told people I was for the death penalty in the most severe cases -- and I believe this fits into the 'most severe case' category,'" Rendell said Tuesday.
Banks, a state prison guard with a history of violence, used an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to kill five of his children, ages 1 to 6, along with four current or former girlfriends, a daughter of one of the girlfriends, the mother and nephew of another girlfriend, and a teenage bystander on Sept. 25, 1982, in Wilkes-Barre.
He barricaded himself inside a friend's house but was persuaded to come out by a bogus police radio broadcast claiming that some of the children were still alive but needed blood and organ transplants from their father to survive, Flora said.
Banks said after his arrest that he acted to spare his own children the racist abuse he had suffered as a biracial child growing up in Wilkes-Barre. He was declared mentally competent to stand trial, where he testified that police had killed some of the victims and displayed gory photographs of the victims to jurors.
Tried killing himself
While in prison he has tried to kill himself four times, made suicide threats and engaged in "religious fasts" that once required officials to force-feed him, according to court records. A defense psychiatric report said Banks "acts on his psychotic thinking in dramatic and life-threatening ways, which raises serious questions about his competency to make decisions for himself."
After a troubled childhood and a stint in the Army, Banks was convicted of felonious assault with intent to kill and attempted robbery in 1962 and served seven years in prison. That sentence was commuted by Gov. Milton Shapp in 1974.
Medical records describe his "chronic and unremitting" symptoms of chronic thought disorder, including paranoid suspiciousness, delusions, belief in mind-reading, messages received from the television, excessive religious preoccupation, food phobias, and racing and obsessive thoughts.
No long-term improvement
Medication and hospitalizations have not resulted in any long-term improvement in his condition, according to his doctors.
Banks had 10 days after Oct. 5, the day Rendell scheduled his execution, to seek clemency. Defense lawyers said that during that time, prison officials noted he was starving himself, talking at his cell door, complaining about a conspiracy and exhibiting other disturbing behavior.
The execution would be performed at Rockview State Prison in Bellefonte.