Top court blocks execution

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, acting on a case that has become a cause celebre among capital punishment opponents, overturned the death sentence of a long-serving Texas inmate who claimed prosecutors played dirty and withheld evidence at his trial.

The court's action, announced Tuesday, came in the case of a man who came within minutes of execution last year before the court stepped in last year to stop it.

Delma Banks, one of the country's longest-serving death row inmates, was sentenced to die for the 1980 killing of a 16-year-old former co-worker at a fast-food restaurant. Prosecutors said Banks wanted the victim's car, and shot the teenager three times "for the hell of it."

The high court's 7-2 ruling means Banks can continue to press his appeals in lower courts.

Banks maintains he is innocent, and that he was framed by lying witnesses who were bought off by the state.

Banks was able to document how prosecutors kept quiet as key witnesses against Banks lied on the stand, and how the state hid those witnesses' links to police through round after round of appeals, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the high court majority.

"When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight," Ginsburg wrote for the high court majority.

The facts of the Banks case are tangled and unusual, meaning that Tuesday's ruling in his favor may have little effect on other death row inmates or on future prosecutions.