The opinion piece in The Atlantic was written by Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Atlanta; Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development; and Bishop Shelton Fabre of Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana, chairman of the bishops' Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism.
The bishops pointed to the case of Keith Tharpe, who was convicted in 1990 of two counts of kidnapping and the murder of his sister-in-law, Jacquelyn Freeman.
Tharpe was scheduled to be executed in September 2017. The Supreme Court intervened with a temporary stay of execution just hours before the inmate was set to be put to death. The Supreme Court ordered a federal appeals court in Atlanta to re-examine the claim that one juror's racist views had prejudiced the case. In an affidavit after the trial, the juror had used racial slurs and said he "wondered if black people even have souls."
The appeals court barred Tharpe's appeal on procedural grounds and ruled that the Supreme Court's 2017 opinion allowing courts to consider evidence of jurors' racial prejudice could not be retroactively applied to Tharpe's case.
Now, Tharpe has asked the Supreme Court to consider the merits of his case - to examine whether the inmate was unconstitutionally sentenced to death based on the racism of a juror. The Supreme Court has yet to announce whether it will take up the case.
Since there is clear evidence that racism may have played a part in Tharpe's sentence, the bishops said, the Supreme Court should take up the case and "correct the clear, documented racism in the case by granting him a new sentencing hearing."