The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court ruling that an Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer in 1985 was no longer legally eligible to be executed because strokes wiped out his memory of committing the murder.
The nine justices ruled unanimously that Alabama can execute 67-year-old Vernon Madison, who has spent decades on death row. They said Supreme Court precedent had not established “that a prisoner is incompetent to be executed because of a failure to remember his commission of the crime.”
