08 November 2017 :

The U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous per curiam decision has upheld a decision of the Alabama state courts that Vernon Madison is competent to be executed. The Court ruled that the Alabama courts' determination that Madison is competent—despite several strokes that have diminished his intellectual capacity and left him with no memory of the crime for which he was sentenced to death—was not an unreasonable determination of fact or an unreasonable application of clearly established federal constitutional law. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor concurred in the judgment, saying that "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," but that review of the issue is precluded under the federal habeas corpus statute.