A warrant was signed Wednesday scheduling the execution of a 59-year-old man for the 1990 murder of his sister-in-law.
Keith Leroy Tharpe is scheduled to die at 7 p.m. on Sept. 26 for shooting Jaquelin Freeman three times after stopping her and his estranged wife as they drove to work.
If Tharpe is executed, he will be only the second man Georgia has put to death this year, unlike 2016 when the state executed a record nine murderers.
The last person Georgia executed was J.W. Ledford, Jr. who died by lethal injection at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center in Jackson on May 17. Ledford had killed an elderly physician and neighbor, Harry Buchanan Johnston, in 1991.
In Tharpe’s case, his sister-in-law’s murder in Jones County in Middle Georgia, came several weeks after his wife left him and their violent marriage.
In a phone call almost a month after Tharpe’s wife moved in with her mother, he told her if she wanted to “play dirty,” he would show her “what dirty was.”
A month after that call, Tharpe followed through despite a court order prohibiting him from having any contact with his ex-wife or her family
Tharpe stopped the sisters on the way out of their car. He shot the 29-year-old Freeman three times and then kidnapped his estranged wife, later raping her in the car on the side of the road.
Tharpe was caught because he had driven his ex-wife to Macon to withdraw funds from her credit union. She called police instead.
At his death penalty trial, which came just over three months after the murder, 13 witnesses — his mother, sister, two of his daughters, and even the ex-wife he assaulted — described Tharpe as a good son, brother, father and husband who was emotionally distressed because his marriage was ending.
RELATED: The Faces of Georgia's Death Row
MORE: An AJC reporter describes being inside Georgia's death chamber
Tharpe’s lawyers tried to portray him as deserving of mercy because he was a good guy who made a mistake due to being emotionally fraught.
At the same time, mental health experts for both Tharpe and prosecutors testified otherwise. His own expert said Tharpe was a “mean son of a bitch.”
As recently as June, his lawyers tried to get his conviction overturned on the basis because of racial prejudices.
According to court filings, one juror told lawyers after the trial that African Americans were either “good black folks” or “n.....s.” The juror went on to explain, the motion said, that Freeman’s family was “nice black folks” and if they “had been the type Tharpe is, then picking between life or death for Tharpe wouldn’t have mattered as much.”
While Georgia law bars jurors’ testimony from being used to overturn a verdict, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that the prohibition didn’t apply if attorneys could show racial bias affected a verdict.
Know what's really going on with crime and public safety in your community, including breaking news, trial coverage, trends and the latest on unsolved cases. Sign up for the AJC's crime and safety newsletter delivered weekly to your inbox.
Previous death penalty coverage:
About the Author
