Happily Wisconsin does not have the death penalty, so SCOTUS’s decision to grant cert in Madison v. Alabama, USSC No. 17-7505, is not directly relevant to our clients. But the issues for review, pasted in below are certainly interesting. Madison’s counsel of record is Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative.
(1) Whether, consistent with the Eighth Amendment, and the Supreme Court’s decisions in Ford v. Wainwright and Panetti v. Quarterman, a state may execute a prisoner whose mental disability leaves him with no memory of his commission of the capital offense; and
(2) Whether evolving standards of decency and the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment bar the execution of a prisoner whose competency has been compromised by vascular dementia and multiple strokes causing severe cognitive dysfunction and a degenerative medical condition that prevents him from remembering the crime for which he was convicted or understanding the circumstances of his scheduled execution.
