Supreme Court okays execution of inmate sentenced to death by racist juror

The U.S. Supreme will not take up the death penalty case of Keith Tharpe, a black Georgia death row inmate. He was sentenced to death in 1991 for kidnapping and killing his estranged wife’s sister-in-law, Jaqueline Freeman. That death sentence was handed down by a jury including a white juror named Barney Gattie, who made no effort at all to make is racism a secret.

Gattie said Tharpe should get the death penalty because he believed there were two types of black people, “regular black folk” and “n****rs.” In his mind, the latter included Tharpe, and that type deserved to die. Despite this blatant racism from a juror, no court has ever heard Tharpe’s claim that he was subject to racial bias and now no court ever will. The Supreme Court turned the case away, clearing the state of Georgia to schedule his execution.

“Today’s decision from the U.S. Supreme Court takes giant steps backwards from the Court’s longstanding commitment to eradicating the pernicious effects of racial discrimination,” Marcy Widder, a lawyer for Tharpe, said in a statement. “What happened in Mr. Tharpe’s death penalty case was wrong.” It was wrong, and though the court was unanimous in turning the case away, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made clear in her concurring statement that while she was “profoundly troubled by the underlying facts of the case,” the court had to make its decision based on a procedural issue—whether the racial bias claim was made in a timely manner.

That delay was in part caused by the state of Georgia itself. By the time his case made it to the 11th Circuit court of appeals in 2010, the court decided that the delays caused by the state meant that his racial bias claim wasn’t raised early enough to be taken into consideration. In 2018, the case came back before the 11th Circuit after a Supreme Court stay of execution. The lower court decided again that Tharpe was barred from raising the racial bias claim. That reconsideration done, the Supreme Court wouldn’t take the claim on.

America, where white supremacists can still kill people of color and do it with the approval of the Supreme Court.