For Loss of Memory, Death row murderer can’t be executed, court rules

HE was sentenced to death for slaying a police officer, but the US state of Alabama can’t execute a 66-year-old inmate with stroke-induced dementia.

A court has ruled he doesn’t understand his death sentence or remember the killing.


Citing testimony from a competency hearing, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week ruled that death row inmate Vernon Madison is incompetent to be executed because a series of strokes have left him unable to understand the reason for the death sentence.

“Mr. Madison may have been told that he is being executed because of the murder he committed, but he doesn’t remember his capital offence, and according to his perception of reality he never committed murder,” judges wrote in the decision.

It’s the latest twist in a stay of execution which was handed down last May, hours before Madison was set to die by lethal injection.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled it is a violation of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment to execute someone who doesn’t have a rational understanding of their death sentence.