Supreme Court Reverses Ruling Sparing Killer Who Forgot the Crime
Source: U.S. News & World Report
Nov. 6, 2017, at 9:51 a.m.
By Andrew Chung
(Reuters) - 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.
Alabama had appealed a March federal appeals court ruling that 67-year-old Vernon Madison could not be put to death because his memory loss had left him unable to understand the connection between his crime and the punishment he is due to receive.
In an unsigned and unanimous opinion, the nine justices said that Supreme Court precedent has not clearly established "that a prisoner is incompetent to be executed because of a failure to remember his commission of the crime." The justices said that under federal law, they must defer to lower court decisions in the case.
Madison shot Julius Schulte, a police officer in Mobile, twice in the back of the head as Schulte supervised Madison's move out of his former girlfriend's house, according to court papers. He was sentenced to death after a trial in 1994, and has spent decades on death row.
Read more: https://www.usnews.com/news/us/articles/2017-11-06/supreme-court-reverses-ruling-sparing-killer-who-forgot-the-crime
= new reply since forum marked as read
is not about justice and mercy, but the irrevocable need for punishment and revenge.
At least we can be sure he actually committed the crime he can't remember now. Reasonably sure. 
