Man Executed For Wife, Stepdaughter's Slaying
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STARKE (CBSMiami/AP) — A Florida man convicted of killing his wife and 10-year old stepdaughter in 1992 was executed Thursday evening.
Forty-three-year-old Chadwick Banks was pronounced dead at 7:27 EST after a lethal injection at Florida State Prison, the office of Gov. Rick Scott said.
Banks was set to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. pending a last appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Banks was convicted in 1994 after pleading no contest to two counts of first-degree murder for the slayings of his wife, Cassandra Banks, and his 10-year-old stepdaughter, Melody Cooper
He was also convicted of sexual battery of a child for raping Cooper before shooting her.
Banks, who was 21 at the time of the killings, received a life sentence for his wife's murder, and a jury recommended death for the stepdaughter's slaying.
The scheduled execution was the eighth in Florida this year and the 20th since Gov. Rick Scott took office in 2011. That's one fewer than under Jeb Bush during both of his terms. Bush presided over the most executions since capital punishment was reinstated in the state in 1979, but Scott was just re-elected to a second term.
Banks ordered a last meal of fried fish, French fries, hush puppies, banana pudding and ice cream, said Jessica Cary, a spokeswoman with the Florida Department of Corrections. Fourteen family members came to visit him, and he spent time with a spiritual adviser.
On the night of the killings, Banks was drinking at a pool hall in Quincy, Florida, about 20 miles outside of Tallahassee. Banks' wife left the bar without him, and he left about an hour later and went to their home, where he found her asleep. According to authorities, Banks shot her while she slept, then went into his stepdaughter's room where he told police he molested her for about 20 minutes before shooting her in the head.
Florida uses a three-drug mixture to execute prisoners: midazolam hydrochloride, vecuronium bromide and potassium chloride. The drugs are administered intravenously and are intended to first induce unconsciousness, then paralysis and finally cardiac arrest.
Midazolam, a sedative used commonly in surgeries, has been part of the three-drug mixture since 2013. Sodium thiopental was used before that, but its U.S. manufacturer stopped making it and Europe banned its manufacturers from exporting it for executions.
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