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Madison v. Alabama

Docket No.	Op. Below	Argument	Opinion	Vote	Author	Term
17-7505	Ala. Cir. Ct.	Oct 2, 2018 Tr.Aud.	Feb 27, 2019	5-3	Kagan	OT 2018

Holding: The Eighth Amendment may permit executing a prisoner even if he cannot remember committing his crime, but it may prohibit executing a prisoner who suffers from dementia or another disorder rather than psychotic delusions.

Judgment: Vacated and remanded, 5-3, in an opinion by Justice Kagan on February 27, 2019. Justice Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Thomas and Gorsuch joined. Justice Kavanaugh took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Opinion analysis: Court orders new look at death sentence for Alabama inmate with dementia (Amy Howe)
Argument analysis: A narrow victory possible for death-row inmate with dementia? (Amy Howe)
OT2018 #1: "Rearranging Deck Chairs" (First Mondays)
Argument preview: Justices to consider competency in capital cases (Amy Howe)
OT2018 #0: "Looks A Lot Like Grift" (First Mondays)
Criminal cases in the October 2018 term: A law professor’s dream (Rory Little)
Justices add three cases to merits docket, but deny review in DACA-termination case (Amy Howe)

Date	Proceedings and Orders (key to color coding)
Jan 18 2018	Petition for a writ of certiorari and motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis filed. (Response due February 20, 2018)
Jan 19 2018	Brief of respondent State of Alabama in opposition filed.
Jan 22 2018	Application (17A770) for a stay of execution of sentence of death, submitted to Justice Thomas.
Jan 22 2018	Reply of petitioner Vernon Madison filed.
Jan 22 2018	Response to application from respondent State of Alabama filed.
Jan 25 2018	UPON CONSIDERATION of the application of counsel for the applicant, IT IS ORDERED that execution of the sentence of death is hereby stayed pending further order of Justice Thomas or of the Court.
Jan 25 2018	Application (17A770) referred to the Court.
Jan 25 2018	Application (17A770) granted by the Court. The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the Court is granted pending the disposition of the petition for a writ of certiorari. Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically. In the event the petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, the stay shall terminate upon the issuance of the mandate of this Court. Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, and Justice Gorsuch would deny the application.
Feb 01 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/16/2018.
Feb 20 2018	DISTRIBUTED for Conference of 2/23/2018.
Feb 26 2018	Motion to proceed in forma pauperis and petition for a writ of certiorari GRANTED.
Mar 15 2018	Joint motion for an extension of time file the briefs on the merits.
Mar 27 2018	Joint motion to extend the time to file the briefs on the merits granted. The time to file the joint appendix and petitioner's brief on the merits is extended to and including May 22, 2018. The time to file respondent's brief on the merits is extended to and including July 31, 2018.
May 10 2018	Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner Vernon Madison.
May 18 2018	Blanket Consent filed by Respondent, Alabama
May 21 2018	Blanket Consent filed by Petitioner, Vernon Madison
May 22 2018	Brief of petitioner Vernon Madison filed.
May 29 2018	Motion to dispense with printing the joint appendix filed by petitioner GRANTED.
May 29 2018	Brief amici curiae of American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association filed.
Jul 09 2018	SET FOR ARGUMENT On Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Jul 31 2018	Brief of respondent State of Alabama filed.
Aug 03 2018	CIRCULATED
Aug 07 2018	Record requested from the Circuit Court of Alabama, Mobile County.
Aug 07 2018	Brief amici curiae of States of Texas, et al. filed. (Distributed)
Aug 07 2018	Brief amicus curiae of National Association of Police Organizations filed. (Distributed)
Aug 14 2018	Record received from the Court of Criminal Appeals State of Alabama. The record is electronic.
Aug 16 2018	Record received from the Circuit Court of Alabama, Mobile County. The record is electronic.
Aug 17 2018	Record received from the Circuit Court of Alabama, Mobile County. 1 envelope.
Aug 24 2018	Record received from the Circuit Court of Mobile Alabama (additional material).
Aug 30 2018	Reply of petitioner Vernon Madison filed. (Distributed)
Oct 02 2018	Argued. For petitioner: Bryan A. Stevenson, Montgomery, Ala. For respondent: Thomas R. Govan, Jr., Alabama Deputy Attorney General, Montgomery, Ala.
Dec 18 2018	Record received from the Mobile County Circuit Criminal, one box of exhibits.
Feb 27 2019	Judgment VACATED and case 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.
Apr 01 2019	MANDATE ISSUED.
Apr 01 2019	JUDGMENT ISSUED.

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The Supreme Court released orders from the April 18 conference on Monday; the justices agreed to decide Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, consolidated with Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, CITGO Asphalt Refining Co. v. Frescati Shipping Co., Ltd., and Barton v. Barr. The justices also called for the views of the U.S. solicitor general in Putnam Investments, LLC v. Brotherston.
On Tuesday, the justices dismissed Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian as improvidently granted.
On Wednesday, the justices released their opinion in Lamps Plus Inc. v. Varela.
On Monday, the justices heard oral argument in Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media and Fort Bend County, Texas v. Davis.
On Tuesday morning, the justices heard oral argument in Department of Commerce v. New York. On Tuesday afternoon, they heard argument in Mitchell v. Wisconsin and Rehaif v. United States.
On Wednesday, the justices heard oral argument in Quarles v. United States and Taggart v. Lorenzen.
On Friday, the justices meet for their April 26 conference; John Elwood compiles the petitions relisted for this conference.
Major Cases
- Department of Commerce v. New York
  (1) Whether the district court erred in enjoining the secretary of the Department of Commerce from reinstating a question about citizenship to the 2020 decennial census on the ground that the secretary’s decision violated the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 701 et seq; (2) whether, in an action seeking to set aside agency action under the APA, a district court may order discovery outside the administrative record to probe the mental processes of the agency decisionmaker -- including by compelling the testimony of high-ranking executive branch officials -- without a strong showing that the decisionmaker disbelieved the objective reasons in the administrative record, irreversibly prejudged the issue, or acted on a legally forbidden basis; and (3) whether the secretary’s decision to add a citizenship question to the decennial census violated the enumeration clause of the U.S. Constitution.
- Lamone v. Benisek
  In case in which the plaintiffs allege that a Maryland congressional district was gerrymandered to retaliate against them for their political views: (1) whether the various legal claims articulated by the three-judge district court are unmanageable; (2) whether the three-judge district court erred when, in granting plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment, it resolved disputes of material fact as to multiple elements of plaintiffs’ claims, failed to view the evidence in the light most favorable to the non-moving party, and treated as “undisputed” evidence that is the subject of still-unresolved hearsay and other evidentiary objections; and (3) whether the three-judge district court abused its discretion in entering an injunction despite the plaintiffs’ years-long delay in seeking injunctive relief, rendering the remedy applicable to at most one election before the next decennial census necessitates another redistricting.
- Kisor v. Wilkie
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule Auer v. Robbins and Bowles v. Seminole Rock & Sand Co., which direct courts to defer to an agency’s reasonable interpretation of its own ambiguous regulation.
- Rucho v. Common Cause
  (1) Whether plaintiffs have standing to press their partisan gerrymandering claims; (2) whether plaintiffs’ partisan gerrymandering claims are justiciable; and (3) whether North Carolina’s 2016 congressional map is, in fact, an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
- The American Legion v. American Humanist Association
  (1) Whether a 93-year-old memorial to the fallen of World War I is unconstitutional merely because it is shaped like a cross; (2) whether the constitutionality of a passive display incorporating religious symbolism should be assessed under the tests articulated in Lemon v. Kurtzman, Van Orden v. Perry, Town of Greece v. Galloway or some other test; and (3) whether, if the test from Lemon v. Kurtzman applies, the expenditure of funds for the routine upkeep and maintenance of a cross-shaped war memorial, without more, amounts to an excessive entanglement with religion in violation of the First Amendment.
- Gamble v. United States
  Whether the Supreme Court should overrule the “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy clause.
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- Bucklew v. Precythe Baze v. Rees and Glossip v. Gross govern all Eighth Amendment challenges alleging that a method of execution inflicts unconstitutionally cruel pain; Russell Bucklew’s as-applied challenge to Missouri’s single-drug execution protocol -- that it would cause him severe pain because of his particular medical condition -- fails to satisfy the Baze-Glossip test.
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Current Relists
- Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. (1) Whether a state may require health-care facilities to dispose of fetal remains in the same manner as other human remains, i.e., by burial or cremation; and (2) whether a state may prohibit abortions motivated solely by the race, sex or disability of the fetus and require abortion doctors to inform patients of the prohibition.
- City of Newport Beach, California v. Vos (1) Whether Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires law enforcement officers to provide accommodations to an armed, violent and mentally ill suspect in the course of bringing the suspect into custody; (2) whether, under the Fourth Amendment “totality of the circumstances” analysis for assessing the reasonableness of force used against a suspect who attacks law enforcement officers, a court must take into account allegedly unreasonable police conduct that took place before the use of force, but foreseeably created the need to use that force; and (3) whether, under the Fourth Amendment’s analysis for use of force, a law enforcement officer’s interest in using deadly force against a suspect threatening an officer’s life is diminished if the assailant is mentally ill.
- Dahne v. Richey Whether prison inmates have a First Amendment right to include threatening, abusive and irrelevant language in grievances.
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Cases argued 70

Cases decided 32

Summary reversals 4

Merits cases granted to date 73

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14	15 Orders IANCU V. BRUNETTI (18-302) EMULEX CORP. V. VARJABEDIAN (18-459)	16 PARKER DRILLING MANAGEMENT SERVICES V. NEWTON (18-389) NORTH CAROLINA DEPARTMENT OF REVENUE V. KAESTNER FAMILY TRUST (18-457)	17 UNITED STATES V. DAVIS (18-431) MCDONOUGH V. SMITH (18-485)	18 Conference	19	20
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Justice Thomas at Pepperdine Law School

On March 30, Justice Clarence Thomas spoke with former clerk Brittney Lane Kubisch and Pepperdine University President-elect James Gash at Pepperdine University School of Law. Thomas told the audience that he had no plans to retire from the Supreme Court.

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Cases argued	70
Cases decided	32
Summary reversals	4
Merits cases granted to date	73

Madison v. Alabama

SCOTUSblog Coverage

Featured Posts

Justices allow Texas execution to go forward – Amy Howe

Reschedule Watch Returns – John Elwood

Argument analysis: Court leaning toward requiring the government to prove that a felon in possession knew he was a felon – Evan Lee

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