10 January 2018 :

The U.S. Supreme Court has granted 6-3 the petition for writ of certioari of Keith Tharpe, whose execution was stayed on September 26, 2017. The Court remanded Tharpe's case to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for consideration of his claim that he was denied a fair trial because one of his jurors, Barney Gattie, admitted that he believed there are two "there are two types of black people: 1. Black folks and 2. N[**]gers," and Tharpe was not in "the 'good' black folks category". Seven years after Tharpe was sentenced to death, in january 1991 for the 1990 murder of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman, his attorneys obtained a sworn affidavit reviewed and initialed by Gattie, a white man who served as a juror at Tharpe's trial. In his statement, Gattie also said, "After studying the Bible, I have wondered if black people even have souls". Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented from the decision.