WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday from lawyers trying to stop Alabama’s planned execution of an elderly prisoner with memory loss so severe he is unable to recall the murder he was convicted of committing.
Vernon Madison, 68, was sentenced to death in 1985 for killing Cpl. Julius Schulte, who was responding to a domestic violence call.
The problem is that Madison can’t recall any of the details of his crime, his lawyers said. In the last two years, he suffered two strokes that left his brain function deeply impaired. He has severe vascular dementia and has trouble moving, according to attorneys at the Equal Justice Initiative.
Madison v. Alabama first reached the Supreme Court in 2016. An expert witness for the defense said that Madison was unable to remember any of the 25 vignette elements read to him about the details of his 30-year-old crime.
This may render Madison too incompetent for execution under a .precedent set in Ford v. Wainwright and Panetti v. Quarterman designed to prevent “cruel and unusual punishments” barred by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution.
The Supreme Court, however, already determined last year that Madison was competent enough to acknowledge both that he was sentenced to death and that he killed an officer decades ago.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote a concurring statement asking Madison’s defense to repurpose their arguments for Tuesday’s proceedings.
“The issue whether a State may administer the death penalty to a person whose disability leaves him without memory of his commission of a capital offense is a substantial question not yet addressed by the Court. Appropriately presented, the issue would warrant full airing,” wrote Justice Ginsburg.
Madison’s execution was scheduled for January of this year, but was delayed and quickly appealed because Dr. Karl Kirkland’s expert testimony might be unreliable due to his arrest on a drug related charge in 2016.
Madison v. Alabama is one of two Supreme Court hearings to address the death penalty this month.
Breyer suggested to reconsider the death penalty altogether writing, “Rather than develop a constitutional jurisprudence that focuses upon the special circumstances of the aged, however, I believe it would be wiser to reconsider the root cause of the problem—the constitutionality of the death penalty itself.”