WASHINGTON—U.S. Supreme Court justices, delving into the issue of aging prisoners with dementia, struggled on Oct. 2 over whether a convicted Alabama murderer should be spared the death penalty because strokes have erased his memory of committing the crime.
Vernon Madison, 68, was convicted and sentenced to death for fatally shooting a Mobile police officer in 1985.
During an hour of arguments, the justices heard from both Alabama and Madison’s attorney that severe cognitive decline could preclude a state from executing inmates who cannot understand what was happening to them. But it remained unclear whether the justices will decide Madison fits that criteria.
The justices, on the second day of their new term, must determine whether executing Madison would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. A ruling is due by June.
Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, a death penalty critic, said there are many aging inmates who, like Madison, have spent decades on death row.
“So this will become a more common problem,” Breyer said.
The Supreme Court has previously imposed limits on capital punishment for mentally incompetent or intellectually disabled people.
Madison suffered several strokes in recent years, resulting in brain damage, dementia and memory impairment, according to court papers. He is legally blind, cannot walk unassisted and speaks with a slur.
The dispute centers on whether Madison can understand the connection between his crime and the planned punishment. Alabama has said Madison can understand the link. A federal appeals court ruled last year that he cannot.
The justices ruled last year that Alabama could execute Madison, but on Jan. 25 they then halted his execution and a month later agreed to hear his case.
Madison shot Julius Schulte, a police officer in Mobile, twice in the back of the head as Schulte supervised Madison’s move out of his former girlfriend’s house, according to court papers.
Attorneys for Alabama and Madison told the justices memory loss alone cannot exempt someone from execution.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, asked Madison’s attorney Bryan Stevenson whether he conceded that “simply blacking out, you don’t remember the crime” was not enough.
“It doesn’t make them incompetent,” Stevenson agreed, but asked the justices to bar execution when “someone has a disability that renders them incapable of orienting to time or place.”
Liberal justices including Sonia Sotomayor appeared to agree Madison should be spared, but conservative Justice Samuel Alito noted that experts evaluating the case said Madison understands the meaning of the death sentence and certain other details.
“Nothing about Mr. Madison’s conditions impact the state’s interest in seeking retribution for a heinous crime,” Alabama Deputy Attorney General Thomas Govan said.
Madison, who is black, was sentenced to death in 1994 in his third trial. His first two convictions were thrown out on appeal for racial discrimination in jury selection and other prosecutorial misconduct.
Source: Reuters, October 2, 2018
Who Is Not Competent To Be Put To Death?
A death row inmate convicted of a 1985 murder of a police officer has spent the last thirty-plus years awaiting his execution. Due to a reported series of strokes contributing to a vascular dementia and a litany of physical and mental challenges, his lawyers maintain he has no memory of the brutal event. All told, facilitating the death penalty in this case begs the question: Would such an action violate the Eighth Amendment guaranteeing no cruel and unusual punishment be inflicted?
And, that is why his competency is being questioned at the highest level. The U.S. Supreme Court is now involved in determining the legality of following through with such an irreversible measure when the subject is supposedly this impaired.
Is it ethical to execute someone who knew why they were sentenced for their crime at the time of their conviction, but now with protracted wait times, aging and development of degenerative neurological disease can no longer understand the situation? While many argue the stress of the prolonged period between sentencing and execution in itself violates the standard set by the Eighth Amendment, the question remains if dementia and other medical conditions that impact cognition should be disqualifying?
The particulars of this case involve disparate expert clinical status assessments and many legal challenges. But, the crux of the bigger picture is very significant to consider as this is and likely will be one of a number of situations that become ethically fuzzy. The tide tends to be shifting on the death penalty as an acceptable option for punishment and cultural tendencies are softening. Especially when botched executions are making the media rounds as of late, pharmaceutical companies are withholding use of their drugs for this non-therapeutic purpose, exonerations are occurring due to advancements in DNA testing of the wrongfully accused; it stands to reason with time we are not drawing more distinct lines, but rather more questions from ever increasing ambiguity.
Is it more or less cruel to push the boundaries of how long an inmate has to live with the knowledge and anxiety that he will be put to death than to be given the sentence in the first place? Is it more or less cruel to know at the time of an execution that you are being executed? Is it more or less cruel to be unaware of the reason why you are being executed? Cruel and unusual punishment runs both ways.
For the person who is no longer competent secondary to the development of a medical malady, is our society accepting of carrying out the death penalty under these circumstances?
Source:
acsh.org, Jamie Wells M.D., October 2, 2018
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
