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 defendent simultaneously expresses their innocence toward those same charges,” according to the Cornell Law School.
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.
Alford plea skips the full process of a criminal trial because the defendant agrees to accept all the ramifications of a guilty verdict.
Banks will be sentenced on December 9. Banks remains suspended without pay.
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.
Dasan Jones was found unresponsive in the attic/crawlspace. Jones was taken to the hospital where he died.
Banks was then detained in a police car after he was handcuffed.
“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.
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.