Background
In May 1991, Anthony George Bankston, a member of the Nine Deuce Bishops Blood gang in Los Angeles, fatally shot Benson Jones near the corner of Beach and Firestone Streets — Blood territory — after one of Bankston’s companions challenged Benson, a Crip, with the words “What’s up Blood?” Bankston also shot and wounded Benson’s brother Benjamin and, weeks earlier, had killed Jesus Sanchez in a drive-by shooting in a rival gang’s Compton neighborhood. Multiple eyewitnesses identified Bankston at both crime scenes, and he was arrested days later with a loaded AK-47-style rifle and a .38-caliber revolver in his car.
Because both murders were charged together, the jury found a multiple-murder special circumstance, making Bankston eligible for the death penalty (Penal Code section 190.2). This is an automatic appeal — California’s Constitution requires the Supreme Court to review every death sentence, meaning the case comes directly to the high court rather than going through the intermediate Court of Appeal. Bankston represented himself through both guilt-phase trials and the penalty phase, assisted by advisory counsel, after waiving his right to appointed counsel over repeated and emphatic warnings from the trial court about the grave disadvantages of self-representation in a capital case.
The penalty phase jury returned a death verdict in 1994. By the time the Supreme Court issued this opinion in 2026 — more than three decades after the original crimes — both sides agreed that the penalty phase had been marred by violations of the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 (Penal Code section 745), a law that did not exist at the time of trial.
The Court’s Holding
The California Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Kruger joined by Chief Justice Guerrero and three other justices, affirmed all of Bankston’s guilt-phase convictions — first-degree murder of two victims, attempted murder, and assault with a firearm — along with the related firearm-use and great-bodily-injury enhancements. The court rejected every challenge Bankston raised to the guilt phase: his waiver of counsel was knowing and voluntary; the voir dire was adequate; admission of hearsay from police gang-tracking records (his FI card and GREAT printout) was harmless error given the overwhelming independent evidence of his gang membership; and the admission of his rap sheet was likewise harmless. The court also affirmed the multiple-murder special circumstance finding.
On the penalty phase, however, the court reversed the death judgment. Both parties conceded — and the court agreed — that the California Racial Justice Act of 2020 (the Act) was violated during the penalty proceedings. The Act, enacted after this trial concluded, prohibits the state from seeking or obtaining a death sentence on the basis of race, and it allows defendants to raise such claims even in cases that were tried before the law existed. The nature of the specific Racial Justice Act violations is addressed in the full opinion beyond the portion excerpted here; the court remanded the case for a new penalty-phase proceeding that complies with the Act.
Justices Liu and Evans each filed separate concurring opinions, addressing aspects of the case beyond the majority’s analysis. The overall disposition: guilt convictions stand; death sentence is reversed; the case returns to the trial court for a new penalty determination.
Key Takeaways
- The California Racial Justice Act of 2020 applies retroactively to pending death-penalty appeals, even when the trial occurred decades before the law was enacted — both parties in Bankston conceded violations, and the court treated the Act as a live basis for reversal without extended debate over retroactivity.
- A defendant’s waiver of the right to counsel is valid even in a capital case if the record as a whole shows the defendant understood the risks; the trial court need not follow a prescribed script, but repeated, specific warnings about the disadvantages of self-representation strengthen the record substantially.
- Gang-tracking database records (FI cards, GREAT printouts) introduced through expert testimony can raise hearsay and Confrontation Clause issues under People v. Sanchez and Crawford v. Washington, but admission is harmless when the record contains overwhelming independent, competent evidence of gang membership — here, the defendant’s own admissions, witness testimony, and writings in his photo album.
- Objections to restrictions on peremptory challenges and to the adequacy of voir dire must be raised at trial, not for the first time on appeal; defense counsel who agrees to or accepts a jury-selection procedure at trial forfeits the right to challenge it later.
- The Supreme Court used this case to discourage the voir dire practice of having jurors in the gallery silently note responses to questions asked only of those in the jury box, flagging it as a risk to thorough bias exposure even while finding no reversible error on the facts here.
Why It Matters
Bankston is one of the first California Supreme Court opinions to reverse a death sentence squarely on Racial Justice Act grounds in a case tried long before the Act existed. That result, joined by five justices with no dissent on this point, sends a clear signal: the Act is a powerful retroactive tool in capital post-conviction litigation. Defense attorneys handling automatic death-penalty appeals — and prosecutors defending them — now know that conceding an Act violation is a viable path, and that the remedy is a new penalty phase rather than outright vacation of all convictions. The decision also reinforces that the Act operates independently of whether there was any intentional racial discrimination; the statute focuses on whether race played a role in the outcome, not on discriminatory motive.
For criminal practitioners more broadly, the case is a useful survey of capital-case procedural law: it restates the standards for Faretta self-representation waivers, confirms that Sanchez hearsay errors can be harmless when other evidence saturates the same point, and illustrates how forfeiture doctrine forecloses appellate review of unpreserved jury-selection complaints. The opinion’s 30-plus-year timeline from crime to final Supreme Court ruling also underscores the extraordinary duration of California’s capital appeals process and the consequent reach of retroactive legislation into cases tried under entirely different legal frameworks.