THANKS TO GOTT IM HIMMEL, BO WILL NOT BE EXECUTED

Georgia prisoner dies years after racist juror admits wondering 'if black people even have souls'

by Lauren Floyd

Daily Kos
January 26, 2020

A Georgia inmate died Friday, Jan. 24 after spending years fighting the jury decision that landed him on death row after he argued a racist juror negatively impacted his case, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Keith “Bo” Tharpe died at 61-years-old at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison of what the organization representing him reported were likely complications resulting from cancer. His case had earlier went before the U.S. Supreme Court leading to a stay of his execution after what was planned to be his last meal Sept. 26, 2017, the AJC reported.

Although Tharpe was sentenced in the death of his sister-in-law Jaquelin Freeman in 1991, the exposure of juror Barney Gattie’s multiple racist comments seven years later brought new light to the case. “After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls, ” Gattie said in a signed affidavit cited in a Supreme Court decision. The racist also called Tharpe the n-word in the affidavit. “There are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. N----rs,” he said.

Gattie added that Tharpe, “‘who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in [his] book, should get the electric chair for what he did.” Still, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied Tharpe’s appeal of the verdict after concluding “he had not made an adequate showing that Gattie’s racial bias affected the jury’s verdict.” Although the Supreme Court disagreed with that decision and sent the case to an appeals court, Tharpe was unsuccessful in his appeal due in part to a procedural flaw the state of Georgia prompted.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said in the writ decision: “Before this Court, Tharpe argues that he could not have raised his racial-bias claim in a motion for new trial or on direct appeal because he did not know—indeed, could not have known—of the predicate facts of the claim at that time… If preserved, that argument would have force. But Tharpe did not make this argument before the District Court until a footnote in his reply brief in the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure...” Therefore, an appeals court was forced to limit its consideration only to a claim Tharpe made that he had ineffective assistance, which didn’t lead to an overturned verdict for Tharpe. The Supreme Court ultimately chose not to hear Tharpe’s appeal, according to the court decision. “As this may be the end of the road for Tharpe’s juror-bias claim, however, we should not look away from the magnitude of the potential injustice that procedural barriers are shielding from judicial review,” Sotomayer wrote. “Tharpe has uncovered truly striking evidence of juror bias.” The justice later added: “It may be tempting to dismiss Tharpe’s case as an outlier, but racial bias is ‘a familiar and recurring evil.’”