Sentence of One of Alabama’s Longest Serving Death Row Inmates Reduced After 30 Years

On December 6, Bobby Tarver, who had spent 30 years on Alabama​’s death row, final­ly had his death sen­tence reduced to life with­out parole by a state judge because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Tarver was Mobile County’s longest-serv­ing death row inmate, hav­ing been con­vict­ed in 1982 of mur­der­ing a taxi cab dri­ver. Last September, a fed­er­al judge over­ruled state court opin­ions and held that Tarver could not be exe­cut­ed because of his men­tal retar­da­tion, thus con­clud­ing a years-long legal bat­tle about Tarver’s men­tal capac­i­ty. The final rul­ing came ten years after the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia (2002) that it was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to exe­cute defen­dants with mental retardation.

(B. Kirby, ​“Judge changes sen­tence of Mobile County’s longest-serv­ing death row inmate to life,” Birmingham News, December 6, 2012. See Intellectual Disability and Time on Death Row.