The US Supreme Court overturned the death sentence for a Texas man today because of misconduct by prosecutors, who withheld significant evidence favorable to him during his trial.
The high court's 7-2 ruling was a victory for Delma Banks, a black man with no prior criminal record who was sentenced to die for shooting to death a 16-year-old white boy in April 1980 in the east Texas town of Nash.
Banks, who was 21 at the time of the crime, was within minutes of being put to death 11 months ago when the Supreme Court granted a stay of his execution.
The decision sent the case back to a lower court for further proceedings. Banks, one of the country's longest serving death row inmates, has been on death row since his conviction and sentencing in the fall of 1980.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ordered a hearing to consider whether Banks should get a new trial to determine his guilt or innocence because of the prosecutorial misconduct.
"The state withheld evidence that would have allowed Banks to discredit two key prosecution witnesses by showing their links to the police," Justice Ginsburg said in reading a summary of the ruling from the bench.
"When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight," she said.