From Volume 87, Number 6 (September 2014)
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In 1980, twenty-one-year-old Delma Banks, Jr. was convicted of murdering sixteen-year-old Richard Whitehead outside of Nash, Texas and was sentenced to death for his crime. During the penalty phase of Banks’s trial, the question that would determine whether Banks was eligible for a death sentence was whether a probability existed that he would commit other violent crimes and continue to pose a threat to society if allowed to live. Robert Farr was an essential witness for the prosecution on this point. Farr testified that, before Banks was arrested, Farr had traveled with Banks to Dallas to pick up a pistol that he and Banks needed to commit a series of robberies they were planning. “According to Farr, Banks ‘said he would take care of it’ if ‘there was any trouble during these burglaries.’” On cross-examination, Farr perjured himself twice when asked if he had provided information about the trip to a deputy sheriff, answering that he had not. The state remained silent during this questioning.
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