Here is another part of Black History Month that has a tragic ending

Here is another part of Black History Month that has a tragic ending.

Not all of Black History has been a shining glory and much of it has been treated with sinister hands.  This is the condensed story of Mr. Jerry Banks, a black man wrongfully accused of a murder of two white people in 1974.  And his ending is not a happy one.
Jerry Banks lived on Banks Road between Rock Quarry Road and Flippen Road.  The road being named for his family.  On November 7, 1974, Jerry Banks went out hunting with his dog and found two dead bodies those of Marvin King 38 band director at Jonesboro High School and Melanie Ann Hartsfield 19 who attended Clayton Jr. College and was one of King’s former students.  Mr. Banks found their bodies on a lonely dirt road in a very rural part of Henry County.  Each had been shot with a shotgun.  Their bodies had been dragged about a hundred feed from where the shooting occurred into the weeds and covered with a blanket.  Marvin King’s car was then driven off and abandoned in a field three miles away.  Melanie Hartsfield’s car was found at Mays Corner in the Food Giant shopping center.

Jerry Banks happened upon the bodies and was scared right then and went up to Rock Quarry Road and flagged down a motorist to get them to call the police. Almost, exactly one month after the murders Jerry Banks was arrested for the crime.  Basically because he was a black man and a perfect person in the eyes of the police to have committed the crime.  Banks went on trial in January and on January 31, 1975 just four days after the trial started he was found guilty of the crimes and sentenced to die in the electric chair.  His  inept lawyer saw that his client was charged by not putting on a proper defense.  He would later be disbarred for poor practices as an attorney at law.

Jerry Banks sat on death row for some three years as another team went to appeal the sentence and it was still upheld.  So, a group went in and took the case to the Georgia Court of Appeals who over turned the previous convictions because the police had concealed evidence.  He was retried and found guilty again and sentenced for the deaths of King and Hartsfield.  In 1980, Banks had a new group of pro-bono lawyers who took the case to the Georgia Supreme Court and introduced some more new evidence that was not allowed in the original trial. The Court over turned the sentence and released Jerry Banks.  The Henry County District Attorney said he would go for another trial until presented with some more findings and he dropped the idea.

On December 22, 1980, Jerry Banks was a free man.  He had been imprisoned for a double murder for over six years, three of those on death row in the state penitentiary. Jerry Banks joyously returned home and was reunited with his wife and three children.  He soon discovered though that his wife had fallen in love with another man and wanted a divorce.  After all that had happened to him Jerry Banks couldn’t handle this jolting news.  He was suffering  terrific headaches; he was mentally and emotionally crushed; and he was afraid of losing custody of his children.  So, on March 29, 1981, Jerry Banks pulled out a pistol and shot his wife and then himself.  He died instantly, but his wife lingered for a month in a coma before passing away.  Jerry Banks last written words were, “They had taken all that I had, all that I held dear to me.”

Since, that time no one has ever been convicted of the crime of killing Marvin King and Melanie Ann Hartsfield.  That murder is still unsolved.  A black man’s life was ruined by this murder also.  Mr. Charles Sargent has written a very indepth account of the events surrounding the murder of Marvin King and Melanie Anne Hartsfield and the subsequent death of two more Jerry Banks and his wife in “The Sins of Henry County.”   This was a terrible tragedy for a black family here in Henry County.  This is a story for Black History Month that many don’t like to hear, but it needs telling.