Federal Appeals Court Finds Alabama Prisoner Incompetent To Be Executed

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 15 that Alabama death-row pris­on­er Vernon Madison (pic­tured) — who was spared exe­cu­tion last May when the U.S. Supreme Court dead­locked at 4 – 4 on whether to lift a stay — is not men­tal­ly com­pe­tent to be executed. 

The appeals court over­turned an Alabama state court rul­ing, say­ing that the state court had unrea­son­ably deter­mined the facts when it con­clud­ed that Madison was aware of the rea­sons for his impend­ing exe­cu­tion. ​“The only evi­dence in the record that does address this issue demon­strates that, due to his seri­ous men­tal dis­or­der, Mr. Madison does not under­stand the con­nec­tion between his crime and his exe­cu­tion,” Judge Beverly Martin wrote. 

Under the 1986 Supreme Court rul­ing Ford v. Wainwright, the exe­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als who lack a ratio­nal or fac­tu­al under­stand­ing that they will be exe­cut­ed and the rea­son for their exe­cu­tion con­sti­tutes cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. The court found that the record con­tained uncon­tro­vert­ed evi­dence that Madison has ​“mem­o­ry loss, dif­fi­cul­ty com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and pro­found dis­ori­en­ta­tion and con­fu­sion,” in part caused by two debil­i­tat­ing strokes in 2015 and 2016. As a result, he no longer remem­bers the crime for which he was sen­tenced to death, nor does he under­stand why he was to be exe­cut­ed. He asked the prison to noti­fy his moth­er of one of his strokes, but she had been dead for sev­er­al years. The court not­ed that Madison is, ​“legal­ly blind, can­not walk inde­pen­dent­ly, is incon­ti­nent and has slurred speech.” 

Madison is one of the longest serv­ing death-row pris­on­ers in Alabama, hav­ing been tried three times for the 1985 mur­der of a Mobile police offi­cer. His first con­vic­tion was over­turned because of racial­ly biased jury selec­tion. His sec­ond con­vic­tion was reversed because pros­e­cu­tors pre­sent­ed ille­gal evi­dence. At his third tri­al, the jury vot­ed 8 – 4 to rec­om­mend that Madison receive a life sen­tence, but the judge over­rode the jury’s ver­dict and sen­tenced him to death. 

In 2016, the Eleventh Circuit grant­ed Madison a stay of exe­cu­tion just hours before he was sched­uled to die, in order to con­sid­er his incom­pe­ten­cy claim, and the Supreme Court split on the pros­e­cu­tion’s motion to vacate the stay, leav­ing the appeals court’s deci­sion in place.