A killer is sitting in Georgia waiting to die tonight. There is no question that he is a killer. After his wife left him in 1990, he confronted her and her sister-in-law on their way to work, and ended up shooting the sister-in-law multiple times with a shotgun. These facts are not disputed, so if he dies tonight, it will certainly be a killer that was put to death. This is not a case for the Innocence Project.
However, there are still troubling aspects of his death sentence. To start, he has severe intellectual disabilities, and a lifetime of substance abuse. This combination led him to be unable to deal with his wife leaving him, and he basically snapped. Now, you might find sympathy for the disabled, while not finding sympathy for someone who started getting blackout drunk at the age of ten. That's fine. But it's reasonable to think that an objective jury would have considered the overall circumstances as mitigating to the point that perhaps, in the least, imprisonment was more appropriate than death.
Unfortunately, the jury was apparently not objective. One of the jurors signed an affidavit in the presence of defense lawyers working the case, in which he declared that the other jurors wanted to use him as an example, to punish him as an illustration of the price of black-on-black violence. Which is troubling enough. This juror (who is now dead), however, had another, more troubling, view. He felt there were two kinds of black people, "good black folks" and "n****rs." He personally knew the victim and thought of her family as "good black folks," while the defendant was not. If he had simply shot another "n****r," he wouldn't have cared, but since he killed a "good" black person, he deserved to die. He then went on to describe his thinking that black people don't have souls, and made a strange reference to O.J. Simpson, saying Nicole Brown would still be alive if she had married a white guy.
Two days later, lawyers from the state pulled him in, and had him sign a new affidavit which declared race was not part of his thought process, and hadn't been discussed in the jury room. He claimed the defense lawyers misrepresented him, and also that he had been drunk when he gave the affidavit.
Again, the man is guilty. There is no doubt. But if there is a better example of the judicial system breaking down in the face of racial prejudice in the last thirty years, I haven't seen it.
The Georgia Supreme Court rejected his final appeal today, and he was scheduled to die at 7 pm, but officials waited, as he had outstanding federal appeals, and SCOTUS just a few minutes ago issued a temporary stay so they can consider granting cert, over the objections of Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch. No word yet on whether Georgia officials are waiting to see if there is a ruling tonight, or packing it in until at least tomorrow.
Edit to add link to introductory story about the case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/26/keith-leroy-tharpe-georgia-prisoner-race-bias
Edit again to clarify the circumstances of the two affidavits.
However, there are still troubling aspects of his death sentence. To start, he has severe intellectual disabilities, and a lifetime of substance abuse. This combination led him to be unable to deal with his wife leaving him, and he basically snapped. Now, you might find sympathy for the disabled, while not finding sympathy for someone who started getting blackout drunk at the age of ten. That's fine. But it's reasonable to think that an objective jury would have considered the overall circumstances as mitigating to the point that perhaps, in the least, imprisonment was more appropriate than death.
Unfortunately, the jury was apparently not objective. One of the jurors signed an affidavit in the presence of defense lawyers working the case, in which he declared that the other jurors wanted to use him as an example, to punish him as an illustration of the price of black-on-black violence. Which is troubling enough. This juror (who is now dead), however, had another, more troubling, view. He felt there were two kinds of black people, "good black folks" and "n****rs." He personally knew the victim and thought of her family as "good black folks," while the defendant was not. If he had simply shot another "n****r," he wouldn't have cared, but since he killed a "good" black person, he deserved to die. He then went on to describe his thinking that black people don't have souls, and made a strange reference to O.J. Simpson, saying Nicole Brown would still be alive if she had married a white guy.
Two days later, lawyers from the state pulled him in, and had him sign a new affidavit which declared race was not part of his thought process, and hadn't been discussed in the jury room. He claimed the defense lawyers misrepresented him, and also that he had been drunk when he gave the affidavit.
Again, the man is guilty. There is no doubt. But if there is a better example of the judicial system breaking down in the face of racial prejudice in the last thirty years, I haven't seen it.
The Georgia Supreme Court rejected his final appeal today, and he was scheduled to die at 7 pm, but officials waited, as he had outstanding federal appeals, and SCOTUS just a few minutes ago issued a temporary stay so they can consider granting cert, over the objections of Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch. No word yet on whether Georgia officials are waiting to see if there is a ruling tonight, or packing it in until at least tomorrow.
Edit to add link to introductory story about the case: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/26/keith-leroy-tharpe-georgia-prisoner-race-bias
Edit again to clarify the circumstances of the two affidavits.
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