The Chief Justice continues to find common ground with the liberal wing of SCOTUS, this time on a ruling that Alabama’s court system did not adequately investigate whether or not death row inmate Vernon Madison’s mental condition is such that he recognizes why he is to be executed:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the court’s four liberals in saying Alabama death-row inmate Vernon Madison deserves another chance to prove that strokes and worsening vascular dementia have left him unable to remember his crime or why the state wants to execute him. [WaPo]
The ruling was 5-3, with Justice Kavanaugh not part of the proceedings. While I wouldn’t care to state that Roberts is swinging left just yet, it does appear he has more sympathy for the arguments advanced by the liberals than for the conservatives.
Incidentally, Justice Alito is fairly blistering in his dissent, which was joined by Justice Thomas and IJ Gorsuch. From the opinion, Madison v Alabama, p 19:
What the Court has done in this case makes a mockery of our Rules.
Petitioner’s counsel convinced the Court to stay his client’s execution and to grant his petition for a writ of certiorari for the purpose of deciding a clear-cut constitutional question: Does the Eighth Amendment prohibit the execution of a murderer who cannot recall committing the murder for which the death sentence was imposed? The petition strenuously argued that executing such a person is unconstitutional. After persuading the Court to grant review of this question, counsel abruptly changed course. Perhaps because he concluded (correctly) that petitioner was unlikely to prevail on the question raised in the petition, he conceded that the argument advanced in his petition was wrong, and he switched to an entirely different argument, namely, that the state court had rejected petitioner’s claim that he is incompetent to be executed because the court erroneously thought that dementia, as opposed to other mental conditions, cannot provide a basis for such a claim.
I have no idea if it’s customary to indulge in such hyperbolic language in SCOTUS dissents, nor as to the accuracy of Justice Alito’s claims. But I can’t help but note that first sentence is an ugly little bit of grunge. I suggest, oh, The Court’s opinion in this case makes a mockery of our Rules.
