Keith Tharpe, 59, was due to be executed by lethal injection at 7 p.m. at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson for the murder of Jackie Freeman, the sister of his wife, Migrisus Tharpe in 1990.
The Supreme Court granted a stay of execution after Tharpe’s lawyers filed a last-ditch motion seeking to halt the execution due to what they argued was racial bias on the part of the juror. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch opposed the stay.
“We are extremely thankful that the Court has seen fit to consider Mr. Tharpe’s claim of juror racial bias in regular order,” said Brian Kammer, an attorney for Tharpe.
The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles on Monday denied a request to stop the execution after lawyers for Tharpe said a white juror in the case “possessed profoundly racist views” and repeatedly used racial slurs during deliberations to describe Tharpe.
“After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls,” the juror told Tharpe’s lawyers in an affidavit a few years after the trial, according to Tharpe’s appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court filed on Saturday.
