The New York Times

Wednesday, February 23, 2000

Court Looks at Electric Chair

By LINDA GREENHOUSE

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - [...] Without explanation, the court lifted the stay of execution it had granted on Feb. 4 to an Alabama death row inmate, Robert L. Tarver Jr., who challenged the state's use of the electric chair as cruel and unusual punishment.

The court had granted the stay, hours before Mr. Tarver's scheduled execution, in order to decide whether to hear his case on the merits. Earlier this term, the court agreed to hear, and then dismissed, a challenge to Florida's use of the electric chair after the state passed a new law to make lethal injection the preferred method of execution. Similar legislation is moving through the Alabama Legislature but has not yet passed either house.

Four justices -- John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer -- voted to hear the Alabama inmate's case. Ordinary, four votes are all that are required for the court to hear a case. But Mr. Tarver's case was procedurally unusual, seeking a writ of habeas corpus directly from the Supreme Court rather than as an appeal from a lower court. Although the Supreme Court has not disclosed its internal rules for acting on habeas corpus petitions, and did not do so today, the court evidently regards five votes rather than four as necessary to grant such a petition. The case was In re Tarver, No. 99-8044.