If you were on trial for your life, would you want your fate entrusted into the hands of a juror who questioned whether you had a soul because of the color of your skin?
Well that’s what happened in the case of Keith Tharpe, who sits on Georgia’s death row, at least in part, because he is Black.
As Samuel Spital, Director of Litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc, recounts in a powerful op-ed for the National Law Journal:
“One of the jurors in Tharpe’s case signed a stunning affidavit in which he asserted that there are two types of Black people—‘good black folks’ and ‘ni**ers.’ The juror, Bernard Gattie, claimed Tharpe fell into the second category, which influenced Gattie in voting for a death sentence. Underscoring his utter lack of respect for Tharpe’s humanity, Gattie stated: ‘After studying the Bible, I have wondered if Black people even have souls.’”
Surely one would agree that this falls short of the “impartial jury” guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment of our Constitution. And yet, no state or federal court has considered the merits of Mr. Tharpe’s extraordinary claim because the lower courts have imposed a variety of procedural roadblocks to deny relief. As Spital importantly points out, no “judge-made procedural obstacles” should prevent a court from consideration of compelling evidence that racial prejudice influenced a death sentence:
“…a death sentence infected with such racism represents ‘a disturbing departure from a basic premise of our criminal justice system: Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are’…The court’s failure to address this kind of overt racial bias in sentencing harms not only the defendant sentenced to die but undermines public confidence in the justice system.”
Mr. Tharpe’s case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court once again – it will be the last chance for Mr. Tharpe to have the evidence of racial animus in his case considered. As Spital concludes:
“In keeping with its duty to eradicate the pernicious effects of racial discrimination in the judicial system, the U.S. Supreme Court must, once again, intervene in Tharpe’s case and prevent the State of Georgia from executing Tharpe before any court has considered the compelling evidence that Tharpe was sentenced to death, at least in part, because he is black. Such intervention is critical to Tharpe, to the enforcement of our core constitutional principles, and to our collective faith in the fairness of our justice system.”