[2] On November 29, 1990, the Pennsylvania State Legislature barred further use of the electric chair amid debate that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment; it approved execution by lethal injection.
[4] On the night of September 24, 1982, Banks drank a large quantity of gin and took prescription drugs at his home on Schoolhouse Lane in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.
[6] Banks dressed in military fatigues and went outside, where he saw 22-year-old Jimmy Olsen and 24-year-old Ray Hall Jr, leaving a house across the street.
Banks went to Heather Highlands mobile home park, where his former girlfriend Sharon Mazzillo and their son Kissamayu lived, of whom he had been trying to gain custody.
[citation needed] When police examined the victims at the mobile home park, they connected the incident to Olsen and Hall's shooting, which had been discovered at Schoolhouse Lane.
After abandoning the stolen vehicle, Banks stopped in an isolated grassy area to rest, and subsequently fell asleep.
They tried various tactics to get the murderer to surrender, including having a false news report played over WILK radio saying that the children were alive and needed blood to survive.
At his murder trial, his attorneys tried to argue that, because he was mixed race, he had suffered severely from racism as a child.
By September 1982, he had broken up with girlfriend Sharon Mazillo, who had lived with him at one time, and they were disputing custody of their young son.
[6] Banks was hired as a correctional officer at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, in 1980, despite his criminal record that included the eight years served in prison after the 1961 armed robbery.
In 1982, shortly before his murder spree, Banks told coworkers that he believed a race war was imminent and that he wished to save the five children he'd fathered with four different white girlfriends from the horrors of racism he'd supposedly suffered as a child.
[6] On September 6, he locked himself in a guard tower with a shotgun and threatened to commit suicide—as a result, he was placed on extended leave and ordered to undergo mental-health examination at a Harrisburg-area hospital.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his attorneys' argument that he lacked the mental competency to be executed.
[13] Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge twice signed a death warrant for Banks; however, both times federal appellate courts have stayed his execution.
A judge ruled that Banks was mentally incompetent for execution or to assist his attorneys in seeking clemency.
"[15] In May 2010, a Luzerne County Common Pleas judge held a new hearing and determined that Banks was mentally incompetent for execution or to assist his attorney in a clemency appeal.