Today in our History – January 8, 1991 - Keith Leroy Tharpe sentenced to death.

GM – LIF – Today’s American Champion is a condemned murderer in Georgia has ditched any sort of health kick he might’ve been on in prison, revealing his final meal before being executed next week.

He is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on but before that, he’s going to feast.

Announced by the Georgia Department of Corrections yesterday, he has requested “three spicy chicken breasts, a roast beef sandwich with sauce, a fish sandwich, potato wedges, onion rings, apple pie, and a vanilla milkshake”. NEVER AGAIN!!

Remember - “In my experience I have observed that there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. Niggers. … I felt Tharpe, who wasn’t in the ‘good’ black folks category in my book, should get the electric chair for what he did.” Gattie also declared: “After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls.” - Barney Gattie, a white juror at Tharpe’s trial

Today in our History – January 8, 1991 - Keith Leroy Tharpe sentenced to death.

Attorney General Chris Carr offers the following information in the case against Keith Leroy Tharpe, who is currently scheduled to be executed on September 26, 2017, at 7:00 p.m. for the 1990 murder of his sister-in-law Jaquelin Freeman.

Tharpe has concluded his direct appeal proceedings and his state and federal habeas corpus proceedings. Accordingly, on September 6, 2017, the Superior Court of Jones County filed an order setting the seven-day window in which the execution of Keith Leroy Tharpe may occur to begin at noon, September 26, 2017 and ending seven days later at noon on October 3, 2017.

The Georgia Supreme Court summarized the facts of the case as follows:

Tharpe’s wife left him on August 28, 1990, and moved in with her mother. Following various threats of violence made by the defendant to and about his wife and her family, a peace warrant was taken out against him, and the defendant was ordered not to have any contact with his wife or her family. Notwithstanding this order, Tharpe called his wife on September 24, 1990, and argued with her, saying if she wanted to “play dirty,” he would show her “what dirty was.”

On the morning of the 25th, his wife and her sister-in-law met Tharpe as they drove to work. He used his vehicle to block theirs and force them to stop. He got out of his vehicle, armed with a shotgun and apparently under the influence of drugs, and ordered them out of their vehicle. He then took his sister-in-law to the rear of his vehicle, where he shot her. He rolled her into a ditch, reloaded, and shot her again, killing her.

Tharpe then drove away with his wife. After unsuccessfully trying to rent a motel room, Tharpe parked by the side of the road and raped his wife. Afterward, he drove to Macon, where his wife was to obtain money from her credit union. Instead, she called the police.

Tharpe was indicted in the Superior Court of Jones County, Georgia for malice murder, two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury and armed robbery. Tharpe was convicted of malice murder and two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury and sentenced to death on January 8, 1991. Thereafter, Tharpe filed a motion for a new trial, which was denied on August 15, 1991.

It’s important to remember the trial of Keith Tharpe took place in Georgia. The roots of the death penalty are embedded deep within the horrific history of lynching. As lynchings decreased, legal executions increased. Meanwhile, as civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson recently wrote: “Many defendants of the era learned that the prospect of being executed rather than lynched did little to introduce fairness to the outcome.” Two-thirds of those executed in the 1930s were black. As African Americans fell to 22% of the South’s population by 1950, they made up 75% of the executions. And today — 2017 — even though African Americans make up only 13% of the nation’s population, 43% of death row is black, and 35% of those executed since 1976 have been black.

Former Confederate states are keeping the death penalty alive in America. Where lynchings happened 100 years ago is where executions happen most often today.

Last year, Georgia had more executions than any state in America — and alone constituted almost half of the executions in the whole country in 2018. It’s also true that Georgia had the second-most lynchings in the country from 1877–1950, with 589 documented cases. The legacy of slavery remains intact.

Tharpe’s case is the latest evidence of how unaffected our criminal justice system has been by the Civil Rights Movement, especially when we consider racial bias during sentencing. But do not consider his case exceptional.

Only three years ago, the Supreme Court allowed the 2016 execution of another Georgia man named Kenneth Fults, in which one juror deciding that case, Thomas Buffington, said in a sworn 2005 affidavit: “I don’t know if he [Kenneth Fults] killed anybody,” but the death penalty is “what that nigger deserved.” He was executed nonetheless.

In the 1997 Texas case of Duane Buck, a defense psychologist testified that Buck was more likely to commit future acts of violence because he is black. He literally argued race is a determinant of future dangerousness. Thankfully, a few months ago, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Buck, opening the door to a new sentencing trial. The Court record reads: “Our law punishes people for what they do, not who they are.”

Hopefully, Tharpe will live because of that understanding.

But America’s highest Court must act quickly to save Tharpe’s life. In the racially charged case of Pena-Rodriguez v. Colorado, the Court made a strong statement that when clear evidence of racial bias during jury deliberations emerges after the trial, the right to a fair trial overrides state rules protecting juries from review. This is the case for Tharpe. Georgia law prohibits courts from admitting or considering juror testimony that would “impeach” the verdict. It doesn’t care if there is clear evidence that jurors are racist if such evidence would undermine the verdict and require a new trial — even if those jurors question if black people have souls.

Tharpe’s attorneys argue that in light of the Buck decision and the Pena-Rodriguez case, the courts must remove these procedural obstacles and consider that his case was “fatally tainted by racial bias,” as so many others have been for centuries. They are right. The Supreme Court should protect a man with intellectual disability from being sentenced to death by a jury containing a man whose agenda was racism, not justice.

Research more about this great American tragedy and share it with your babies. Make it a champion day!