Appeal Denied in Electric Chair Case

The Supreme Court on a 5-4 vote cleared the way Tuesday for the electrocution of an Alabama murderer, despite his lawyer’s claim that this “antiquated” method of execution is both horribly cruel and now unusual.

Alabama is one of only three states that still uses the electric chair, and it soon may stand alone. Most states, including California, use lethal injections to carry out the death penalty.

Georgia and Nebraska also still rely on the electric chair. But Georgia lawmakers are moving toward a change, and Nebraska has put a moratorium on capital punishment, where the practice is under study by state legislators.

But Alabama’s attorney general says his state will continue to use electrocution, unless forced to switch by the court system. And apparently, the Supreme Court does not intend to force the issue.

On Feb. 3, just hours before Robert Lee Tarver Jr. was to be put to death, the high court intervened and halted the execution. His lawyers had protested the use of electrocution to carry out the execution, and called it cruel and unusual punishment.

The state’s malfunctioning electric chair had burned and disfigured condemned men in the past, they said, and is likely to do so again. The “evolving standards of decency” in America argue for ending electrocutions, they argued.

In a Florida case, the justices had agreed to consider the continued use of the electric chair but dropped the matter after the state Legislature voted to adopt lethal injections as an alternative.

In his eleventh-hour appeal, the Alabama inmate asked the justices to rule on the same issue. Tarver, 52, was condemned to die for the 1984 robbery and murder of a store owner.

But after considering the appeal for three weeks, the court issued two brief orders Tuesday that rejected his appeal without comment. One denied a review of his case, and the second dismissed the stay of execution.

Four members of the court--Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer--said they wanted to hear the case.

Under the court’s rule, it takes four votes to hear a case, but five to order a stay. In this instance, Tarver would have been executed before the case could be heard unless one other justice voted for the stay.

“We intend to ask the state Supreme Court to set another execution date,” said Clay Crenshaw, an assistant attorney general in Montgomery. “That will probably take a few months.”

The Alabama Legislature has before it a proposal to adopt lethal injections, but it is not clear whether it will pass in time to spare Tarver from the electric chair, Crenshaw said.