Man Sentenced to Death By Juror Who Questioned if ​‘Black People Even Have Souls’ Dies on Georgia’s Death Row

Keith Tharpe — an African American sen­tenced to death 29 years ago by a jury that includ­ed a mem­ber who called him the ​“N‑word” and doubt­ed whether ​“Black peo­ple even have souls”— died on Georgia’s death row January 24, 2020. He was 61 years old. In a press state­ment, his lawyers from the Georgia Death Penalty Resource Center said he had been suf­fer­ing from can­cer and like­ly died of com­pli­ca­tions from the disease.

Tharpe chal­lenged his death sen­tence after Barney Gattie, a juror in his case, told defense inves­ti­ga­tors and then signed an affi­davit say­ing that there were ​“two types of black peo­ple: 1. Black folks and 2. Ni**ers.” Tharpe, Gattie said, ​“wasn’t in the ​‘good’ black folks cat­e­go­ry [and] should get the elec­tric chair for what he did.” Gattie’s affi­davit also said “[s]ome of the jurors vot­ed for death because they felt Tharpe should be an exam­ple to oth­er blacks who kill blacks,” but denied that race had influ­enced his own vote.

Tharpe argued that Gattie’s pres­ence on the jury had denied him a sen­tenc­ing tri­al by an impar­tial jury. However, the Georgia state and low­er fed­er­al courts declined to review his chal­lenge based upon a state-court rule pro­hibit­ing courts from con­sid­er­ing evi­dence ques­tion­ing why jurors reached their ver­dict. Subsequently, in 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court decid­ed Peña-Rodriguez v. Colorado, declar­ing that state rules against impeach­ing a jury ver­dict can­not insu­late a juror’s overt expres­sions of racial bias from judicial review.

Shortly there­after, Tharpe again raised his jury dis­crim­i­na­tion claim. As his September 2017 exe­cu­tion date approached, the Georgia Supreme Court and the U.S Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit both denied his request. On September 26, 2017, three hours after his exe­cu­tion was sched­uled to start, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay based upon his fed­er­al appeal. On January 8, 2018, the Court grant­ed Tharpe’s peti­tion for cer­tio­rari and vacat­ed the judg­ment of the Eleventh Circuit. The Court said the fact that Gattie had nev­er retract­ed his ​“remark­able affi­davit” strong­ly sug­gest­ed that ​“Tharpe’s race affect­ed Gattie’s vote for a death verdict.”

The Court returned the case to the Eleventh Circuit for fur­ther con­sid­er­a­tion. Less than three months lat­er, how­ev­er, the cir­cuit court again refused on pro­ce­dur­al grounds to con­sid­er the issue. The Georgia Supreme Court also declined to revis­it the issue and the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Tharpe’s sec­ond peti­tion to review his claim. 

Following Tharpe’s death, Marcia Widder, one of the Georgia Resource Center lawyers who rep­re­sent­ed Tharpe in his appeals, said that ​“the courts’ fail­ure to con­front the racism taint­ing Mr. Tharpe’s death sen­tence remains a stain on the judi­cial sys­tem and calls for increased efforts to erad­i­cate the poi­son of racism in our criminal courts.”

The racial bias in Tharpe’s case was not the only issue that brought the fair­ness of his pro­ceed­ings into ques­tion. Tharpe’s case rock­et­ed through the state courts, with his death sen­tence imposed only three months after his offense. In that com­pressed tri­al sched­ule, Tharpe’s jury nev­er learned that he had an IQ mea­sured in the 60s, with­in the range for him to be con­sid­ered intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute indi­vid­u­als with intellectual disability.