After three decades on Alabama’s death row, a federal appeals court has decided to hear whether Vernon Madison’s vascular dementia and memory deficits make him unfit to be executed for the 1985 murder of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte
By Brian Lyman
Montgomery Advertiser
May 12, 2016
MOBILE, Alabama -- A federal appeals court Thursday morning stayed the execution of Vernon Madison, convicted of the 1985 murder of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte, to consider arguments that a series of strokes have rendered him incompetent to face his execution.
The state had scheduled the execution of the 65-year-old Madison for 6 p.m. Thursday. But Madison's attorneys argued the strokes have affected his memory, mental capacity and ability to understand his circumstances.
“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 to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals 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.”
Madison’s lawyers say he has suffered multiple strokes over the last year which have lowered his IQ to 72, caused dementia and left him blind and unable to walk on his own. The ruling from the three-judge panel came less than eight hours before the scheduled execution.
A Mobile County Circuit Court last month found Madison competent to face his execution, based on the testimony of two doctors that Madison understood the nature of the case and the reasons for his execution. Madison’s attorneys argued the court used a restrictive definition of the term “mental illness” that did not take into account the effects of Madison’s strokes.
U.S. District Judge Kristi DuBose upheld the lower court’s ruling Tuesday, saying the federal court could only decide whether the state court made “unreasonable” conclusions based on the evidence presented to it. DuBose ruled that the Mobile County court’s conclusions were “not unreasonable” based on the testimony of the two doctors.
Attorneys for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange wrote in their response to Madison’s 11th Circuit Court filing that the federal court had to defer to the state court’s ruling and could not go beyond its findings.
“While Madison can falsely allege that the state court refused to consider dementia as being the same as psychosis or gross delusions, this Court cannot grant relief on that basis even if it were true,” the state wrote.
But the three-judge panel wrote Thursday morning the Madison claim was unique.
"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 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."
The court ordered attorneys to file briefs on whether the Mobile Circuit Court's ruling that Madison is competent was unreasonable based on the facts, or an unreasonable application of the law.
Netiher the attorney general's office nor the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, representing Madison, had an immediate comment on the ruling Thursday morning.
On April 18, 1985, Mobile police officer Julius Schulte responded to a report of a missing child at a home where Madison, then on parole, was staying with his girlfriend Cheryl Green. According to a 1997 court filing, Madison got into an argument with his girlfriend, then left the scene, but returned with a pistol and shot Schulte point-blank in the head. Madison also fired at Green, who was shielding her 11-year-old daughter, hitting her in the back.
Schulte died six days later. Green survived her wounds.
A jury convicted Madison of capital murder in September 1985, but the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a new trial because prosecutors excluded blacks from the jury pool. A second conviction was set aside because prosecutors elicited expert testimony “based on facts not in evidence.”
A third trial in 1994 also resulted in a conviction, but the jury sentenced Madison to life in prison after hearing evidence of mental illness. Mobile County Circuit Judge Ferrill McRae overrode the jury’s decision and imposed a death sentence.
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