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MADISON v. ALABAMA
Syllabus
the AEDPA context. Id., at ___. When Alabama set a 2018 execution date, Madison returned to state court, arguing once more that his mental condition precluded the State from going forward. The state court again found Madison mentally competent.
Held:
- Under Ford and Panetti, the Eighth Amendment may permit executing a prisoner even if he cannot remember committing his crime. Panetti asks only about a person’s comprehension of the State’s reasons for resorting to punishment, not his memory of the crime itself. And the one may exist without the other. Such memory loss, however, still may factor into the analysis Panetti demands. If that loss combines and interacts with other mental shortfalls to deprive a person of the capacity to comprehend why the State is exacting death as a punishment, then the Panetti standard will be satisfied. Pp. 9–11.
- Under Ford and Panetti, the Eighth Amendment may prohibit executing a prisoner even though he suffers from dementia or another disorder rather than psychotic delusions. The Panetti standard focuses on whether a mental disorder has had a particular effect; it has no interest in establishing any precise cause. Panetti’s references to “gross delusions,” 551 U. S., at 960, are no more than a predictable byproduct of that case’s facts. Ford and Panetti hinge on the prisoner’s “[in]comprehension of why he has been singled out” to die, 477 U. S., 409, and kick in if and when that failure of understanding is present, irrespective of whether one disease or another is to blame. In evaluating competency, a judge must therefore look beyond any given diagnosis to a downstream consequence. Pp. 12–14.
- Because this Court is uncertain whether the state court’s decision was tainted by legal error, this case is remanded to that court for renewed consideration of Madison’s competency. The state court’s brief 2018 ruling–which states only that Madison “did not prove a substantial threshold showing of insanity[ ]”–does not provide any assurance that the court knew a person with dementia, and not psychotic delusions, might receive a stay of execution. Nor does that court’s initial 2016 opinion. The sole question on which Madison’s competency depends is whether he can reach a rational understanding of why the State wants to execute him. In answering that question–on which this Court again expresses no view–the state court may not rely on any arguments or evidence tainted with the legal errors addressed by this Court. Pp. 14–18.
Vacated and remanded.
Kagan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Alito, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Thomas and Gorsuch, JJ., joined. Kavanaugh, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
