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(Slip Opinion)              OCTOBER TERM, 2018                                       1

                                       Syllabus

         NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is
       being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.
       The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been
       prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.
       See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 

, 337.


SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

                                       Syllabus

                         MADISON v. ALABAMA

  CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ALABAMA, MOBILE
                        COUNTY

  No. 17–7505. Argued October 2, 2018—Decided February 27, 2019
In Ford v. Wainwright, 

, this Court held that the Eighth
  Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments precludes exe-
  cuting a prisoner who has “lost his sanity” after sentencing. 

. And in Panetti v. Quarterman, 

, the Court set out
  the appropriate competency standard: A State may not execute a
  prisoner whose “mental state is so distorted by a mental illness” that
  he lacks a “rational understanding” of “the State’s rationale for [his]
  execution.” 

 at 958–959.
    Petitioner Vernon Madison was found guilty of capital murder and
  sentenced to death. While awaiting execution, he suffered a series of
  strokes and was diagnosed with vascular dementia. In 2016, Madi-
  son petitioned the state trial court for a stay of execution on the
  ground that he was mentally incompetent, stressing that he could not
  recollect committing the crime for which he had been sentenced to
  die. Alabama responded that Madison had a rational understanding
  of the reasons for his execution, even assuming he had no memory of
  committing his crime. And more broadly, the State claimed that
  Madison failed to implicate Ford and Panetti because both decisions
  concerned themselves with gross delusions, which Madison did not
  have. Following a competency hearing, the trial court found Madison
  competent to be executed. On federal habeas review, this Court
  summarily reversed the Eleventh Circuit’s grant of relief, holding
  that, under the “demanding” and “deferential standard” of the Anti-
  terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA),
  “[n]either Panetti nor Ford ‘clearly established’ that a prisoner is in-
  competent to be executed” because of a simple failure to remember
  his crime. Dunn v. Madison, 583 U. S. ___,