WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court voted Monday to give a black inmate convicted of murder in Georgia a chance to overturn his 27-year-old death sentence because of racist comments made by a white juror years later.
In 1990, Keith Tharpe ambushed and assaulted his ex-wife and shot and killed her sister, Jacquelin Freeman. A few months later, a jury convicted him of those crimes and unanimously voted in favor of a death sentence.
He was set to be executed on Sept. 26 when his lawyers presented to the Supreme Court a statement from Barney Gattie, one of the jurors in Tharpe’s case.
Gattie said he saw “two types of black people,” some of whom were “nice black folks” like Freeman and her family. He used the N-word to characterize the others.
“I felt Tharpe, who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in my book, should get the electric chair for what he did. … After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls,” according to Gattie’s statement.
On Monday, the justices issued a three-page ruling that told the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta to reconsider Tharpe’s plea for a new sentencing hearing.
The unsigned opinion prompted a dissent from Justices Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito and Neil Gorsuch, who derided their colleagues for “ceremonial handwringing” that “callously delays justice” for the black woman who was the murder victim.
