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Scalia’s Death Just Prevented Alabama From Executing A Man

Death row inmate Vernon Madison CREDIT: ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS
Death row inmate Vernon Madison CREDIT: ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

If Vernon Madison’s case had reached the Supreme Court three months ago, he would almost certainly be dead right now.

On Thursday, a federal appeals court ordered Alabama to halt its plans to execute Madison, at least temporarily, so that it will have enough time to consider whether killing Madison would violate the Constitution. Almost immediately, the state asked the Supreme Court to vacate this order, and the Court denied that request in an order handed down late Thursday.

Notably, the Supreme Court split 4–4 on the decision not to allow Madison’s execution to move forward (granting Alabama’s request would have required a majority), with all four of the Court’s conservatives in dissent. If the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a staunch conservative who died three months ago, were still alive, then it is all but certain that Alabama would have prevailed before the justices.

Madison, who was convicted in 1985 of killing a police officer, suffered a severe stroke last January, according to his attorneys. As their brief explains, this stroke “resulted in significant memory loss.” Madison, who is now 65, also “suffers from vascular dementia and resulting retrograde amnesia.” In a psychological evaluation, Madison had “difficulty processing information” and he “was unable to rephrase simple sentences.”

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Most significantly, according to his brief, Madison “does not have an independent recollection of the offense for which he was convicted.”

The inmate’s diminished mental state matters because the Supreme Court held in Panetti v. Quarterman that the Constitution’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment forbids executing prisoners who lack “a rational understanding of the reason for the execution.” As Justice Anthony Kennedy explained in that opinion, “capital punishment is imposed,” at least in part, “because it has the potential to make the offender recognize at last the gravity of his crime.” Yet this goal is poorly served “if the prisoner’s mental state is so distorted by a mental illness that his awareness of the crime and punishment has little or no relation to the understanding of those concepts shared by the community as a whole.”

Without a Supreme Court decision to the contrary, the court of appeals order calls for briefing on whether federal courts can intervene to prevent Madison’s execution under Panetti, and it stays his execution to allow the court time to consider his appeal.

It’s worth noting that Madison most likely prevailed in the Supreme Court because of the unique nature of the legal claim he presented. Most legal challenges to a death sentence, such as a challenge to the trial procedures used to sentence the inmate or to the method of execution, can be presented to the courts well in advance of the inmate’s execution. As the court of appeals explained, however, Panetti claims are “unique from other constitutional claims that arise in capital cases because it becomes ripe for adjudication only when the petitioner’s execution is imminent.” Because an individual’s mental state may change over time, a court cannot evaluate whether they have slipped below the level of mental awareness where execution is permitted until the date of the execution draws nigh. For this reason, Madison’s current case is “the first time that any state or federal court has had the opportunity to consider Madison’s claim that his execution is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.”

Had Madison presented a different sort of claim, it is likely that claim would have made its way through the courts quite a while ago — long before Justice Scalia’s death.