On a September morning in 1990, in Jones, Georgia, the life of 29-year-old Jacqueline Freeman, a Black female, was tragically cut short. The man responsible was her own brother-in-law, Keith “Bo” Tharpe. The events of that day were the culmination of a period of domestic turmoil, as Tharpe’s wife had recently left him. In a tragic turn of events, on September 25, 1990, Tharpe used a truck to block the vehicle in which his estranged wife and Jacqueline Freeman were traveling.
Armed with a shotgun, he took his sister-in-law from the car and fatally shot her.
Following the murder, Keith Tharpe was arrested and stood trial. Just over three months after the killing, in January 1991, a jury in Jones County convicted him of malice murder and two counts of kidnapping with bodily injury. The jury subsequently sentenced him to death. The evidence presented at the trial established his guilt in the shooting death of Jacqueline Freeman.
The legal proceedings that followed Tharpe's conviction were lengthy and complex, drawing national attention. His appeals largely centered on the issue of racial bias within the jury that had sentenced him to death. Years after the trial, an affidavit from one of the white jurors came to light, containing virulently racist statements about Black people and indicating that these views had influenced the decision to impose the death penalty. This revelation led to numerous appeals and legal challenges that worked their way through the state and federal court systems, eventually reaching the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court did intervene at one point, staying a scheduled execution to allow for further consideration of the racial bias claims.
Despite the compelling evidence of juror prejudice, Tharpe’s attempts to have his death sentence overturned were ultimately unsuccessful due to procedural barriers. However, before the state of Georgia could carry out the execution, Keith “Bo” Tharpe’s health declined. While still on death row, he was diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. On January 24, 2020, he passed away in prison, nearly three decades after the murder of Jacqueline Freeman.
