A federal appeals court has granted a motion to stay Thursday night’s scheduled execution of Vernon Madison, who was convicted in the 1985 murder of Mobile, Alabama police officer Julius Schulte.
The court granted a stay in order to hear arguments that he is incompetent to be executed after a series of strokes. Madison, who is now 65 years old, was scheduled to be executed at 6 p.m. by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
“As a result of vascular dementia and memory deficits, he no longer understands why the State of Alabama seeks to execute him,” attorneys for Madison wrote in a brief Wednesday. “In finding him competent, the state court unreasonably imposed a standard more restrictive than what the law requires and failed to consider critical facts of Mr. Madison’s dementia and retrograde amnesia.”
His attorneys argued that he has suffered multiple strokes over the last year that lowered his IQ to 72, led to dementia and left him blind and unable to walk on his own.
The U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals granted the stay less than 12 hours before his scheduled execution. The court’s decision reversed U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose’s decision this week to uphold the Mobile County Circuit Court’s decision last month that found Madison competent to face his execution.
“This 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,” the court’s ruling stated. “This claim could not have been raised before Madison’s execution became imminent, and only the Alabama trial court and the district court have reviewed Madison’s claim.”
Now, Madison’s attorneys must file briefs addressing the aforementioned issues by May 27, while the attorney general’s office has until June 10. Madison’s attorneys have to reply by June 17.
Each side will be allowed a 30-minute oral argument in Atlanta on June 23.
Schulte was killed by Madison when responding to a domestic disturbance call. Madison, who shot Schulte point blank in the head, was on parole at the time.
It took three trials to get a ruling in Madison’s case. A jury finally sentenced Madison to life in prison in 1994 after hearing evidence of mental illness, but Mobile County Circuit Judge Ferrill McRae overrode the jury’s decision and imposed a death sentence.
