US man executed after DNA conviction 18 years on

US man executed after DNA conviction 18 years on

The US state of Oklahoma on Tuesday executed a man convicted of rape and murder, who was connected to the crime 18 years later after advances in DNA technology.

Illustration: Oklahoma executes a man by lethal injection following his conviction through DNA evidence 18 years after he committed rape and murder.

Anthony Banks, 61, was declared dead by lethal injection at 6:07 pm (2307 GMT) in McAlester, according to Jerry Massie, a spokesman for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections.

Banks received a death sentence in 1999 for the murder of South Korean woman Sun "Kim" Travis, who was kidnapped from her Tulsa apartment parking lot on June 6, 1979.

Travis, who was 24, was found raped and shot in the head several miles (kilometers) from her home, according to court documents.

The case remained unsolved for nearly two decades until 1997 when investigators made charges based on DNA samples taken from Travis's body and clothes, investigated using new techniques.

The DNA evidence linked Banks and another man, Allen Nelson, to the crime.

Nelson was sentenced to life in prison, but Banks, who was already serving life in prison for the 1978 murder of a convenience store clerk, was handed the death penalty on November 22, 1999.

Banks's execution was the 24th in the US this year and the 4th in Oklahoma.

Since capital punishment was reinstated in the US in 1976, Oklahoma has executed 106 criminals, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

A Pennsylvania execution scheduled for Tuesday for Harve Johnson, 32, was stalled on procedural grounds.

Johnson was sentenced to death in 2009 for beating to death a two-year-old girl.

No one has been executed in Pennsylvania since 1999.

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