Georgia: Keith Leroy Tharpe set to die after 1991 trial marked by racial bias

Keith Leroy Tharpe, 59, was convicted of killing by jury that included man who said in 1998 affidavit that he wondered if black people ‘even have souls’

A Georgia prisoner whose jury trial was marred by racial bias was set to be executed on Tuesday night, barring an eleventh-hour intervention by the state or the US supreme court.

Keith Leroy Tharpe, 59, lost his bid for clemency on Monday before the state board of pardons and parole. He was convicted in 1991 of the shooting death of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman, in September 1990.

One of the points Tharpe’s attorneys asked the state board to consider was that a juror in the case, Barney Gattie, who has since died, said in an affidavit signed in May 1998: “After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls.”

Gattie allegedly freely used racial slurs and in the affidavit said Freeman came from a family of “nice black folks”. Tharpe, he said, “wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in my book” and so should be executed.

State lawyers met Gattie two days after he signed the affidavit and he walked back much of what he had said, ultimately saying race was not an issue during jury deliberations and that he voted for a death sentence because of the evidence against Tharpe, not because of his race.

In their clemency application, which was declassified on Friday, Tharpe’s lawyers also detailed a tough childhood and a history of substance abuse that they say included getting blackout drunk by age 10 and a debilitating crack cocaine addiction.

Tharpe’s wife left him on 28 August 1990, taking their four daughters to live with her mother. His addiction coupled with intellectual disabilities dating to childhood left him unable to deal effectively with the stress of losing his family, his lawyers wrote in the clemency application.

He drank and smoked crack until early on 25 September 1990, his lawyers wrote. As his wife was driving to work with her brother’s wife, Tharpe used a borrowed truck to block them. He got out armed with a shotgun and ended up killing Freeman.

Tharpe went to trial in Jones County a little more than three months after the killing and was convicted and sentenced to death.

In the clemency application, his lawyers described a changed man who had kicked his addictions, devoted his life to God and sought to help improve the lives of others while developing deep remorse.

“He wishes more than anything he could take back that day and give back Mrs Freeman’s life,” Tharpe’s lawyers wrote. The clemency application included testimonials from Tharpe’s mother, one of his daughters, other family members, prison staff, clergy members and friends.

Georgia has a sordid history regarding the disparate racial impact of the death penalty. In the 1982 Baldus study, an analysis of nearly 2,500 state homicide cases found blatant racial discrepancies in how and when the penalty was handed down, even after accounting for 35 non-racial variables.

The study was a major part of the premise for the 1987 McCleskey v Kemp case in which the US supreme court ruled that a defendant had to prove specific racial bias in their individual case in order to claim a violation of the 14th amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.

The state is also where in 2011 Troy Davis was put to death despite the fact that seven of nine eyewitnesses in the case recanted their testimony, several saying they had been coerced to offer false testimony by police.

A federal judge earlier this month declined to reopen Tharpe’s case. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 11th US circuit court of appeals rejected his appeal. The panel said that in light of a US supreme court decision earlier this year on racial prejudice in jury deliberations, Tharpe must make his arguments in state court first.

If executed, Tharpe would be the second inmate put to death in Georgia this year. JW Ledford Jr, a 45-year-old white man who murdered a neighbor in 1992, was executed by lethal injection in May.

Source: The Guardian, Jamiles Lartey, September 26, 2017

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