Word: tarver
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...Hall for an advance screening of the upcoming PBS documentary “Race to Execution.” The film focuses on two stories of African-Americans on death row. Madison Hobley was sentenced to death for an arson case that took the lives of seven people. Robert Tarver was convicted for the murder of a white businessman. According to the film’s producers, the film is meant to highlight a bias in the American legal system with respect to prosecuting and executing minorities convicted of serious crimes. “We can’t tell...
Those opposed to the death penalty saw a door open in Alabama, and they tried desperately to stick their collective foot in it. But on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court slammed the door in their faces by refusing to hear the case of death row inmate Robert Lee Tarver, whose February 3 electrocution was suspended when his lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court, arguing that death by electric chair, Alabama's sole mode of execution, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. In addition to saving Tarver and others facing electrocution, anti-death penalty activists had been hoping that if the Court...
...Supreme Court dashed those hopes; their decision not to hear Tarver's case sends the condemned man right back to the front of the electrocution line. But, says TIME legal writer Adam Cohen, that may not necessarily be an indication of the Court's attitude toward the death penalty. "It's always hard to read rejections like this," says Cohen. "We can never know the reasons they choose not to hear a case." On the other hand, he notes, "the most liberal Justices - Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg and Breyer - voted to hear the case, and that may be an indication that...
...form of the death penalty more cruel and unusual than another? That's what the U.S. Supreme Court will have to decide when they hear arguments in the case of Alabama death row inmate Robert Lee Tarver. Convicted of robbery and murder in 1984, Tarver was hours from death when the Justices issued a stay of execution and agreed to consider the inmate's claim that Alabama's primary mode of execution - the electric chair - violates his Eighth Amendment rights, which protect him against cruel and unusual punishment. Alabama, Nebraska and Georgia are the only remaining states...
Recently, several states, including Illinois, have reexamined the effects of their death penalty laws. There is a growing trend of concern, both domestically and abroad, that executions in the U.S. may be carried out disproportionately against minorities. And while Robert Tarver wasn't arguing against his death sentence per se, TIME senior reporter Alain Sanders points out that the ensuing legal maneuvers will probably grant Tarver quite a lengthy reprieve. "Tarver argued that he couldn't legally be electrocuted, and in Alabama, that means he can't be executed. Any judicial review will take months, if not years, to wrap...