Top court orders review of death row case
Appeals court ordered to look at role race played in the 27-year-old conviction
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court voted Monday to give a black inmate convicted of murder in Georgia a chance to overturn his 27-yearold death sentence because of racist comments made by a white juror years later.
The unsigned opinion prompted a dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas and two other justices, who derided their colleagues for “ceremonial handwringing” that “callously delays justice” for the black woman who was the murder victim.
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 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, a juror in Tharpe’s case.
Gattie had spoken to defense lawyers in 1998 and said he saw “two types of black people,” “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, … should get the electric chair for what he did. … After study- ing the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls,” according to Gattie’s statement.
The Supreme Court issued a latenight order to stop Tharpe’s execution. And 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 appeals court had previously rejected Tharpe’s request, noting that state judges reviewed what Gattie had said and found no evidence Tharpe had been a victim of a racial bias in the jury room.
“Our review of the record compels a different conclusion,” the justices said in Tharpe v. Sellers. They said Gattie’s affidavit “presents a strong factual basis for the argument that Tharpe’s race affected Gattie’s vote for a death verdict.”
The opinion stops well short of reversing Tharpe’s death sentence, however. It said he still “faces a high bar” in overturning a state judge’s earlier ruling that Gattie’s racist views did not play a role in the jury’s deliberations, the court wrote.
The high court has long struggled with the question of whether and when federal judges should intervene to reopen death penalty cases that were resolved in state courts.