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Politics

Top US court rules for black death row inmate

January 8, 2018

The highest court in the US has ruled that a convicted black man who was tried by a racially-biased jury has a right to appeal. The court also said a Native American group should be able to exercise tribal sovereignty.

https://p.dw.com/p/2qWm6
USA Supreme Court in Washington
Image: Getty Images/AFP/S. Loeb

The US Supreme Court handed down decisions on several civil rights cases on Monday, including allowing a death row inmate in Georgia another chance at an appeal after he claimed to have been the victim of a racially-biased jury.

The court's decision to hear the case had spared the man from execution minutes before he was due to be killed by lethal injection.

Fifty-nine-year-old African American Keith Tharpe was convicted over the kidnap and rape of his estranged wife Misgrisus Tharpe in 1990, as well as the murder of her sister Jaquelin Freeman.

When Tharpe's lawyers were preparing an appeal in 1998, they spoke to several jurors from the original trial, ten of whom were white and two black. One man, Barney Gattie, told the lawyers that he "wondered if black  people even have souls."

In a dissenting opinion that was joined by fellow conservative justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas criticized his colleagues' "ceremonial handwringing."

"The court's decision is no profile in moral courage," said Thomas, the only serving African American justice.

Conservative court backs Native American tribe

In a surprising move for a court that is has become more right-wing since the appointment of Donald Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, an arch-conservative, the court also sided with a Native American tribe seeking to build a casino inside of tribal lands on the wealthy island of Martha's Vineyard.

USA Vereidigung Richter Neil Gorsuch in Washington
The appointment of arch-conservative Neil Gorsuch by President Trump was controversial after congressional Republicans refused to hold a hearing on former President Barack Obama's nominee for the postImage: Getty Images/AFP/M. Ngan

By electing not to take up the case, the Supreme Court effectively allowed the construction of the gambling hall to go forward.

While gambling is illegal in many US states, native peoples have tribal sovereignty over their own lands. After centuries of genocide, land seizures and brutal integration policy, in recent decades — to improve local tribal economies — many Native American tribes across the US have turned to building luxury casinos.

The Aquinnah Wampanoag tribe had been locked in a dispute with the town of Aquinnah over the casino, with the town arguing that a 1980s agreement over the hand specifically prohibited gambling. A lower court sided with the tribe that federal laws had repealed that gambling ban.

Court refuses to hear LGBT discrimination case

The Supreme Court turned away a challenge to a Mississippi law that would allow businesses and government employees to refuse service to LGBT individuals, which has been cast by supporters as a "religious liberty" law.

The court argued that as the law is not yet in place, the plaintiffs – same-sex couples and civil rights advocates – have no legal standing to challenge the law. People who are refused service once the law comes in affect will have better legal standing to sue.

On a similar issue, the court is due to rule before the end of this term over a high-profile LGBT discrimination case involving a baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple.

es/rc (AP, Reuters)