Federal court rejects death-penalty appeal in Jones County murder case

ATLANTA (AP) - A federal appeals court has rejected the arguments of a Georgia death row inmate whose scheduled execution was temporarily halted last year by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court stopped Keith Leroy Tharpe's planned execution in September and in January ordered the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to take up his case, giving him another chance to raise claims of racial bias on his jury.

A juror used a racial slur to describe Tharpe when talking to Tharpe's legal team long after Tharpe was convicted of killing his sister-in-law 27 years ago.

The juror's statements don't change the facts of Tharpe's guilt, his lawyers argued, but they show that he did not get a "fair and impartial" jury to consider his sentence.

The Supreme Court said the 11th Circuit was wrong to conclude reasonable jurists would agree the juror's presence on the jury didn't prejudice the outcome.

The 11th Circuit on Tuesday rejected Tharpe's appeal again, writing that Tharpe has not exhausted his appeals on the issue in Georgia courts before taking the case to the federal level. They said Tharpe could seek a new appeal of his sentence in Butts County Superior Court, based on the racial-bias issue.

Tharpe was sentenced to death in 1991 for the malice murder of Jacquelin Freeman and the kidnapping of his estranged wife.