Execution delayed for a man who can’t recall his crime

ATMORE, Ala. — Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Friday he was disappointed in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to delay the execution of an inmate convicted of killing a police officer in 1985, saying “justice is again delayed” for the officer’s family.

The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution of 67-year-old Vernon Madison on Thursday to further review his attorneys’ claims strokes have left Madison mentally incompetent — to the point that he no longer remembers the killing — and that his sentence is unconstitutional.

“After prior rulings that Vernon Madison is competent to face execution for the murder of a Mobile police officer 32 years ago — a cold blooded crime for which there is no doubt he is guilty — it is disappointing that justice is again delayed for the victim’s family,” Marshall said.

Madison was sentenced to death for the 1985 killing of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte. Schulte had responded to a call about a missing child made by Madison’s then-girlfriend. Prosecutors have said Madison crept up and shot Schulte in the back of the head as he sat in his police car filling out paperwork.

Madison’s attorneys argued that strokes and dementia have left Madison unable to remember killing Schulte or fully understand his scheduled execution.

“We are thrilled that the court stopped this execution tonight. Killing a fragile man suffering from dementia is unnecessary and cruel,” attorney Bryan Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, said Thursday after the stay was granted.