U.S. Supreme Court Halts Georgia Execution

ATLANTA, GA — In a rare move, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the scheduled execution of a Georgia inmate late Tuesday night, after lawyers argued that racism played a role in his conviction and sentence.

Keith Leroy Tharpe, 59, had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7 p.m. for the 1990 murder of his sister-in-law and kidnapping and rape of his estranged wife. But around 10:30 p.m., the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, issued a stay in the case.

The high court now will decide whether to hear an appeal in the case. If it decides not to, the execution will be back on.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts and Sonia Sotomayor sided in favor of the stay. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas were against it.

"We are extremely thankful that the Court has seen fit to consider Mr. Tharpe's claim of juror racial bias in regular order," Tharpe's attorney, Brian Kammer, said in a written statement late Tuesday. (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app.)

At issue are statements made by one of the jurors who decided Tharpe's case in 1991.

In a sworn affidavit after the trial, juror Barney Gattie — now deceased — used a racial slur toward Tharpe and said he "wondered if Black people even have souls." In the statement, Gattie also compared the case to the O.J. Simpson murder case, saying, "That white woman wouldn't have been killed if she hadn't have married that black man."

The NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund sent a letter to the Georgia Board of Pardons and Parole stating: "Mr. Gattie’s statements do make clear that Mr. Tharpe’s death sentence is infected by racial discrimination. As such, it is invalid under Georgia law."

Attorneys also argued that Tharpe s intellectually disabled and was addicted to crack cocaine and alcohol at the time of the crimes.

According to court documents, Tharpe, on Sept. 24, 1990, met up with his estranged wife and sister-in-law in middle Georgia's Jones County, using his vehicle to block them then getting out brandishing a shotgun.

Apparently under the influence of drugs, Tharpe, who had repeatedly threatened his wife and her family with violence, shot his sister-in-law — 29-year-old Jacquelin Freeman — with the shotgun, rolled her into a ditch, reloaded and shot her again.

He then kidnapped his wife. After unsuccessfully trying to rent a motel room, he parked by the side of a road and raped her, court documents say. Afterward, he drove her to Macon, where she was supposed to get money from her credit union.

Instead, she called police.

On January 18, 1991, Tharpe was sentenced to death after a Jones County jury found him guilty of malice murder and two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury.

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles had denied clemency in the case and the Georgia Supreme Court had affirmed his convictions and death sentence.

Photo via Georgia Department of Corrections