MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Lawyers for an Alabama death row inmate asked an appellate court Wednesday to halt his upcoming execution, saying strokes and dementia have rendered him mentally incompetent in the 30 years since he was convicted of killing a Mobile police officer.
Attorneys for Vernon Madison, 65, filed the stay request with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Madison is scheduled to get a lethal injection Thursday evening at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.
Madison was convicted in the 1985 killing of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte. Prosecutors said Madison crept up and shot Schulte in the back of the head as Schulte sat in his police car after responding to a call about a domestic dispute involving Madison.
“Over the course of the past year, Mr. Madison has suffered from multiple strokes that have resulted in significant cognitive decline, suffers from a major vascular neurocognitive disorder, or vascular dementia, and does not rationally understand why the State of Alabama is attempting to execute him,” attorneys for Madison wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment to execute prisoners who don’t have a rational understanding that they are about to be executed and why.