The US Supreme Court stayed the execution of a Georgia inmate who has been on death row for a quarter-century, halting the lethal injection late Tuesday after his attorneys raised questions of racial bias in the case.

Keith Leroy Tharpe was sentenced to death in 1991 for killing Jaquelin Freeman, his sister-in-law. Tharpe’s wife left him in August 1990 and moved in with her mother, and he made violent threats against them before shooting and killing Freeman and raping his wife, according to a summary of the case from the Georgia Supreme Court. He was sentenced to death the following January.

Attorneys for Tharpe sought to stop his execution, writing in a Supreme Court filing that ‘‘racism played [a] pivotal role in his death sentence.’’

According to Tharpe’s attorneys, a juror used a racial epithet to describe Tharpe twice. The juror also told Tharpe’s attorneys that Tharpe had killed ‘‘good black folk’’ and wondered whether black people had souls.

Attorneys for Tharpe said the juror confirmed he had made the statements. But he later said he had been drinking.

washington post