Baltimore police officer enters Alford Plea in death of stepson, allegedly stuffing him inside wall
BALTIMORE -- A Baltimore City police officer entered an Alford Plea to one count of second-degree murder and one count of disarming a police officer in Anne Arundel County.
Eric Banks Jr. reportedly became combative and tried to grab an officer's gun when police responded to a custody dispute call, following the death of his 15-year-old stepson in Curtis Bay in July of 2021.
An Alford Plea "registers a formal admission of guilt toward charges in criminal court while the defendant simultaneously expresses their innocence toward those same charges," according to the Cornell Law School.
It skips the full process of a criminal trial because the defendant agrees to accept all the ramifications of a guilty verdict.
Banks is charged with murdering his stepson Dasan Jones at their home in the Stoney Beach community. Police allege Banks stuffed his stepson's body inside of an upstairs wall.
After police found the body, Banks tried to attack an officer.
His attorney, Warren Brown, told WJZ that he didn't know if his client was guilty of killing the teenager. But he noted that if he was on a jury assigned to determine the outcome of Banks' trial, then he would convict him.
"The evidence, I know it looks bad, and most jurors down here probably are going to convict me of first-degree, so I'll take the plea for second-degree," Brown explained.
Banks will be sentenced on December 9. Banks remains suspended without pay for an incident that occurred before he was charged in the killing of his stepson, according to Baltimore Police Department spokesman Donny Moses.
According to charging documents, when officers came to check on Dasan Jones, Banks deterred them and said he ran out the backdoor.
Banks then allowed officers to search the home, and they went up to a loft upstairs. Officers found an access panel, in which Banks was standing in front of before moving out of the way.
Jones was found unresponsive in the attic/crawlspace. He was taken to the hospital where he died from his injuries.
Brown said that Jones tried to hang himself in the basement before going upstairs to the bathtub, which is where Banks found him.
Banks made some mistakes, Warren said. He didn't perform CPR on Jones and he didn't tell officers that he needed their help when they arrived at his house, he said.
Officers detained Banks in a police car after putting handcuffs on them.
"My life is over," Banks told officers.
According to charging documents, Banks told officers to "choke me, choke me" and then charged the officer and attempted to take his gun.
Banks later admitted to hiding the teen's body after finding him dead in the home. Banks denied killing Jones and said he didn't know how he died.
Anne Arundel County Police Chief Amal Awad described Banks' actions as "very deceptive."
Brown says there is room to question Banks' actions.
"Why would he do this?" he said. "He was in this boy's life for 10 years . . . There was a relationship between he and that boy."
Police said the autopsy showed injuries in the neck, face and mouth, and said he died of asphyxia.
Officers determined that Banks killed Jones and attempted to conceal his body from police.
