A South Dakota prison inmate who has
claimed anti-gay juror bias has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to
intervene in his planned execution.
Charles Rhines' execution is expected
to take place on Monday.
Rhines is on death row in South Dakota
for the 1992 murder of an employee in the course of a commercial
burglary. Rhines stabbed the 22-year-old employee to death after he
caught Rhines burglarizing a doughnut shop in Rapid City.
The 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals last week rejected Rhines' appeal.
On Friday, Rhines asked the Supreme
Court to stay his execution. His lawyers argued that the stay should
be granted because Rhines has not been granted access to experts to
evaluate his claims of cognitive and psychiatric impairments and the
jury pool that indicted him was biased, the AP reported.
Rhines, who is gay, has argued that
some of the jurors in his case believed that he should not be
sentenced to life in prison because as a gay man he would enjoy
serving in a men's prison.
The jury sent a note to the judge
asking whether, if sentenced to life without parole, Rhines would “be
allowed to mix with the general inmate population,” be able to
“brag about his crime to other inmates, especially new and/or young
men,” enjoy “conjugal visits,” and whether he would “have a
cellmate.”
Rhines argues that he was sentenced to
death rather than life in prison because of his sexual orientation.