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Thread: Vernon Madison - Alabama

  1. #121
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    They let Ronald Bert Smith die on a 4-4 vote, but maybe that's different because it wasn't an argued case. I agree that today's ruling is unsurprising, but annoying nonetheless.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  2. #122
    Senior Member Frequent Poster schmutz's Avatar
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    Madison still has to show why he is unfit for execution. The crux of today's ruling is that the state can not rely on the narrowest interpretation of Panetti to rebut such a claim.

  3. #123
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    February 27, 2019

    Bait, Switch, and Do-Over on Competency for Execution

    By Kent Scheidegger
    crimeandcosnequences.com

    The U.S. Supreme Court today decided Madison v. Alabama, No. 17-7505, confirming that the state was right on the question that everyone thought the case was about -- whether inability to remember the crime alone exempted a murderer from execution. No, it does not.

    Of course, a variety of disorders can cause memory loss. So-called "alcoholic blackout," for example, can prevent the transfer of a memory from volatile current memory to long-term storage, like pulling the plug on on your computer before you save a document to the hard drive. Despite inability the remember, the person will have full mental faculties once he sobers up, and he can understand what he did and why he is being punished for it. In Madison's case, though, the underlying cause is vascular dementia, a broader disorder.

    Competency for execution cases have mostly involved psychotic disorders, but the underlying rule is not limited to them. Ford v. Wainwright and Panetti v. Quarterman establish a broader rule that a disorder that prevents rational understanding precludes execution. Because the brief ruling of the state court leaves a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court court in doubt whether it applied the right standard, they send the case back.

    The decision is 5-3 with Justice Kavanaugh not participating. Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dissents from the majority's indulgence of Madison's bait-and-switch:

    What the Court has done in this case makes a mockery of our Rules.

    Petitioner's counsel convinced the Court to stay his client's execution and to grant his petition for a writ of certiorari for the purpose of deciding a clear-cut constitutional question: Does the Eighth Amendment prohibit the execution of a murderer who cannot recall committing the murder for which the death sentence was imposed? The petition strenuously argued that executing such a person is unconstitutional.

    After persuading the Court to grant review of this question, counsel abruptly changed course. Perhaps because he concluded (correctly) that petitioner was unlikely to prevail on the question raised in the petition, he conceded that the argument advanced in his petition was wrong,and he switched to an entirely different argument, namely, that the state court had rejected petitioner's claim that he is incompetent to be executed because the court erroneously thought that dementia, as opposed to other mental conditions, cannot provide a basis for such a claim.

    This was not a question that the Court agreed to hear; indeed, there is no mention whatsoever of this argument in the petition--not even a hint. Nor is this question fairly included within those on which the Court granted review. On the contrary, it is an entirely discrete and independent question.


    The fact that one is representing a death row inmate -- even one who is guilty beyond question -- is a license to get away with anything.

    http://www.crimeandconsequences.com/...er-on-com.html

  4. #124
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Good riddance

    Vernon Madison, one of the longest-serving Alabama Death Row inmates, dies

    Vernon Madison, one of the longest-serving inmates on Alabama’s Death Row, died of natural causes over the weekend.

    The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed his death on Monday. The prison system confirmed Madison died Saturday at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, where Madison was housed along with most of the 175 other inmates awaiting execution. An autopsy is pending but no foul play was suspected, a prison system spokesperson said Monday.

    Madison, 69, has been on death row for more than 30 years after being convicted in the April 1985 of killing Mobile police Cpl. Julius Schulte. He was set to die by lethal injection twice, but escaped execution via a U.S. Supreme Court order each time.

    The last time Madison was set to die was in January 2018. The U.S. Supreme Court’s order late that night halted the execution, and the nation’s high court heard the case in Washington, D.C. later that year. Madison argued in the last years of his life that he should not be executed because he couldn’t remember the crime he was being put to death for committing.

    In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2018, Madison’s attorneys at the Equal Justice Initiative claimed Madison suffered from dementia, had two strokes, brain injuries, a documented loss of IQ and an MRI that showed substantial brain damage.

    In February 2019, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in favor of Madison, ordering a state court hold a hearing to determine whether Madison was so affected by dementia that he can’t be executed. That hearing would have only happened if the Alabama Attorney General’s Office obtained a new execution date, which the office had not at the time of Madison’s death.

    The 2018 filing from Madison’s attorneys said the high court should address the “substantial question of whether executing Mr. Madison, whose severe cognitive dysfunction leaves him without memory of his commission of the capital offense or ability to understand the circumstances of his scheduled execution, violates evolving standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment."

    “It is undisputed that Mr. Madison suffers from vascular dementia as a result of multiple serious strokes in the last two years and no longer has a memory of the commission of the crime for which he is to be executed,” according to the EJI filing. “His mind and body are failing: he suffers from encephalomacia (dead brain tissue), small vessel ischemia, speaks in a dysarthric or slurred manner, is legally blind, can no longer walk independently, and has urinary incontinence as a consequence of damage to his brain.”

    Madison was 34 when he was charged Schulte’s death, who was responding to a domestic disturbance call. Madison also was charged with shooting the woman he lived with at the time, 37-year-old Cheryl Ann Greene. She survived her injuries.

    According to court records filed by the Alabama Attorney General, here's a police account of what happened that night: Madison's neighbor's had called police, and Schulte was assigned to protect Greene and her 11-year-old daughter as Madison moved out of their house. After pretending to leave the property, Madison retrieved a pistol, crept behind the police car Schulte was sitting in, and fired two shots into the back of the officer's head. After shooting Schulte, Madison then shot Greene as she tried to flee. There were three eye witnesses.

    Madison's first trial took place in September 1985. He was convicted, but a state appellate court sent the case back for a violation involving race-based jury selection.

    His second trial took place in 1990. Prosecutors presented a similar case, and defense attorneys again argued that Madison suffered from a mental illness. They did not dispute the fact that Madison shot Schulte, but said he did not know that Schulte - dressed in plain clothes and driving an unmarked police cruiser - was a police officer.

    He was again convicted, and a jury recommended a death sentence by a 10-2 vote. An appellate court again sent the case back to Mobile County for a retrial, this time based on improper testimony from an expert witness for the prosecution.

    His third and final trial took place in April 1994. He was convicted, and the jury recommended a life sentence after both Madison and his mother, Aldonia McMillan, asked for mercy. Mobile County Circuit Judge Ferrill McRae sentenced Madison to death-- this time overriding the jury’s recommendation.

    Madison is the fourth longest-serving-inmate on death row in Alabama. The three men who have been on death row longer than Madison are Arthur Giles, William Bush, and Harry Nicks.

    https://www.al.com/news/mobile/2020/...mate-dies.html
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  5. #125
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    It’s too bad he didn’t die back in 2018. Madison didn’t have the right to die from natural causes
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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  6. #126
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    More like 2016. Scalia's death bought him an extra four years.
    Don't ask questions, just consume product and then get excited for next products.

    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

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