Capital Punishment to be Reconsidered by Supreme Court with Madison v. Alabama

By Emma Davies
Emma Davies  is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, has divided state legislatures, and the public since the country’s conception, and remains in the spotlight as one of America’s biggest hot-button issues. In the currently ongoing Madison v. Alabama Supreme Court case, nine justices are once again addressing this age-old topic of the death penalty, and looking at its intersection with the medical field, psychology, and understandings of culpability.

Countless legislation and court cases have sought to define and regulate the most severe punishment that the law can apply. Policies differ on a state-by-state and county-by-county basis, but is overall modulated by Supreme Court rulings. Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment [1], but in 2017, the death penalty was conducted by eight states on 23 individuals [2]. The Supreme Court plays a role in setting limits on who can impose the death penalty and, in recent years, who can be executed [3]. Madison v. Alabama re-examines the correct parameters of who may or may not receive the death penalty by asking whether or not states should be allowed to execute defendants on death row who do not remember their crimes.   

In the 2002 Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia, the Court ruled that states cannot execute people with severe intellectual disability due to the Eighth Amendment’s forbiddance of “cruel and unusual punishments” [4]. This ruling overturned the 1989 Supreme Court case Penry v. Lynaugh, which did not rule execution of people with severe intellectual disability a violation of the Eighth Amendment [5]. However, it affirmed states’ rights to define themselves what intellectual disability means, thus allowing for flexibility in application of this ruling [6]. In exempting those with severe intellectual disability from execution, Justice John Paul Stevens relied on three rationales when writing for the majority opinion. First, retribution depends on culpability; since mentally disabled people have diminished cognitive and behavioral faculties, they are of lessor culpability and thus are not eligible for the death penalty. Second, mentally disabled criminals are at a disadvantage in the trial process in that they have less of an ability to give their lawyers comprehensive support, they are more likely to confess to a crime they did not commit, and they may be unable to express remorse during the proceedings. Stevens, quoting former Justice Earl Warren in the 1958 Supreme Court case Trop v. Dulles, pointed to the need to respond to “evolving standards of decency,” as determined by the “national consensus,” quoting Justice Sandra Day O’Connor [7]. Stevens also supported that the “national consensus”  was against sentencing the death penalty to mentally disabled individuals, as reflected by “legislation enacted by the country’s legislatures“ and by the “social and professional consensus” of various organizations via amicus curiae briefs [8]. In requiring states to use an evolving standard that is “informed by objective factors to the maximum possible extent” [9], the Supreme Court itself did not establish its own standard for determining the competency of individuals. However, this decision was perceived by some as inadequate, that in practice it was open to manipulation in that each state could set standards in defining who was considered “severely disabled” so that there were no ostensible changes to the status quo. Critics of this ruling point to one particular case of controversy, where state officials in Georgia ignored expert medical opinion and executed a man, Warren Lee Hill, who was identified as “intellectually disabled” because the state applied a “proven beyond reasonable doubt” standard to mental disability [10]. Even though two lower courts had identified Hill as having an “intellectual disability,” supported by doctor evaluations and psychological tests, since Hill had served in the Navy, and at times, was measured to have an IQ in the 90’s, his proof of mental disability did not meet Georgia’s state standard [11]. In these ways, critics claimed that Atkins v. Virginia did not sufficiently prevent states from exempting individuals from execution due to mental disability. Regardless of the decision’s potential deficits, for the 83 incarcerees with severe intellectual disability who had their sentences reduced, Atkins served as an incredibly important decision [12].

In the 2014 Hall v. Florida, the Supreme Court had to consider whether Florida’s trial system violated the standards of Atkins v. Virginia [13] . Particularly, it addressed a case in which convicted murder Freddie Lee Hall filed a claim to be exempt due to mental disability;however, Florida judges declared him qualifiable for execution because he did not fit state requirements of having an IQ below 70. In the 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court specified that a fixed IQ value could not be the sole indicator of whether or not it was permissible to execute someone. Justice Kennedy also argued that Florida’s standards were too narrow by relying only on IQ test without consideration of other evidence [14]. Furthermore, Justice Kennedy expressed that findings within the scientific community have proven that IQ tests are not infallible, but rather open to errors of measurement [15]. By doing so, the Court required state officials to provide a more rigorous and comprehensive evaluation prior to permitting that a individual to be executed [16]. Many saw this as a correction to Atkins v. Virginia. Hall v. Florida sought to reflect scientific consensus that IQ is open to err, and to correct the flexibility that Atkins v. Virginia gave to states in qualifying individuals as exempt from receiving the death penalty.

Now in 2018’s Madison v. Alabama, the question now turns to the constitutionality of executing prisoners that become mentally incapacitated after committing a crime to the degree that they do not remember committing the act. While Atkins v. Virginia and Hall v. Florida questioned the extent to which severely-diminished intellect excludes someone from capital punishment, Madison v. Alabama questions the extent to which the onset of dementia or severely-diminished memory excludes someone from capital punishment. Again, on the table is the consideration of culpability as it relates to health. In this case, the Court must consider whether Alabama has the right to execute Vernon Madison, a convicted murderer, who—after suffering multiple strokes—has become disabled to the point that he can no longer perform simple tasks such as reciting the alphabet, and, perhaps most controversial, remember the crime he committed. This case calls into question the reasoning behind the penal system—is the goal of punishment to enact retributive justice? If so, can justice be served when a prisoner is so severely impaired that they do not know why they are being punished? Madison’s legal team argues that “no penological justification or retributive value can be found in executing a severely impaired and incompetent prisoner.” On the contrary, Alabama defends that as long as Madison knows why he is being punished, execution serves to both retribute for the wrong and deter future offenders [17].

Supporters of capital punishment justify the practice as historically and theoretically fundamental to maintaining a just society. Ending this practice would place a higher value on the lives of the most egregious members of society than the lives of victims, their families, and society. From the opposing side, opponents of the death penalty echo the rationale provided by former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Harry Blackmun, who said that judges ought not to “tinker with the machinery of death” [18] and that capital punishment represents a failed experiment of the penal system.

The side that today’s Supreme Court will take is still unclear due in part to recent changes in the Court’s composition. In past executions cases, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy often provided the decisive vote to create the needed majority for a side, often for the defendant. With newly-appointed Brett Kavanaugh as his replacement, one cannot easily predict the outcome of the decision. While Kavanaugh has been identified to adopt a more conservative jurisprudence grounded in tradition and precedent, his vote remains speculative, as his work on the D.C Circuit primarily involved administrative and environmental law cases and never specifically addressed his standpoint on capital punishment [19].

Again, the Supreme Court must take a stance on an age-old inquiry that creates just as much contention as topics of affirmative action and abortion. The Court must grapple with a topic at the intersection of medicine, morality, and the law. The outcome of this decision will further guide America’s understanding of the role of the penal system, and of the correct structure of federalism for the country.   
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References:
[1] Bazelon, Emily. "Where the Death Penalty Still Lives." The New York Times. August 23, 2016. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/28/magazine/where-the-death-penalty-still-lives.html.

[2] Death Penalty Information Center. Facts about the Death Penalty. Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center. November 28, 2018. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf.

[3]Epps, Garrett. "The Machinery of Death Is Back on the Docket." The Atlantic. September 18, 2018. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/tinkering-with-the-machinery-of-death/570421/.

[4] LII Staff. "Eighth Amendment." LII / Legal Information Institute. October 10, 2017. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/eighth_amendment.

[5] "Penry v. Lynaugh." Oyez. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.oyez.org/cases/1988/87-6177.

[6] Cohen, Andrew. "At Last, the Supreme Court Turns to Mental Disability and the Death Penalty." The Atlantic. October 25, 2013. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/at-last-the-supreme-court-turns-to-mental-disability-and-the-death-penalty/280736/.

[7] LII Staff. "Thompson v. Oklahoma." Legal Information Institute. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/487/815.

[8]Elmore, Kelly Christine. "Atkins v. Virginia: Death Penalty for the Mentally Retarded - Cruel and Unusual - The Crime, Not the Punishment." DePaul Law Review 53, no. 3 (Spring 2004): 1285-346. Accessed December 3, 2018. https://via.library.depaul.edu/law-review/vol53/iss3/14

[9] LII Staff. "Atkins v. Virginia." Legal Information Institute. Accessed December 3, 2018.https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/00-8452.ZS.html.

[10] Connors, Tracy. "Georgia Executes Warren Lee Hill Despite Low IQ Claim." NBCNews.com. January 27, 2015. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection/georgia-executes-warren-lee-hill-despite-low-iq-claim-n294206.

[11] Blinder, Alan. "Georgia Executes Warren Lee Hill for Murder." The New York Times. December 21, 2017. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/us/georgia-executes-warren-lee-hill-for-murder.html.

[12] Blume, John. "Sentence Reversals in Intellectual Disability Cases." Millions Misspent: What Politicians Don't Say About the High Costs of the Death Penalty | Death Penalty Information Center. May 08, 2008. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/2395.

[13] "Hall v. Florida." Oyez, 3 Dec. 2018, www.oyez.org/cases/2013/12-10882.

[14] Denniston, Lyle. "Opinion Analysis: A New Limit on the Death Penalty." SCOTUSblog. May 27, 2014. Accessed December 03, 2018. http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/05/opinion-analysis-a-new-limit-on-the-death-penalty/.

[15] Cohen, Andrew. "Supreme Court Case May Stop States That Still Execute Mentally Disabled." The Atlantic. February 28, 2014. Accessed December 04, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/02/supreme-court-case-may-stop-states-that-still-execute-mentally-disabled/283969/.

[16] Cohen, Andrew. "At Last, the Supreme Court Turns to Mental Disability and the Death Penalty." The Atlantic. October 25, 2013. Accessed December 03, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/10/at-last-the-supreme-court-turns-to-mental-disability-and-the-death-penalty/280736/.

[17] Epps, Garrett. "The Machinery of Death Is Back on the Docket." The Atlantic. September 18, 2018. Accessed December 04, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/tinkering-with-the-machinery-of-death/570421/.

[18] Blackmun. "Callins v. Collins,510 U.S. 1141 (1994)." LII / Legal Information Institute. February 22, 1994. Accessed December 04, 2018. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/93-7054.ZA1.html.

[19] CRS Staff. Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh: His Jurisprudence and Potential Impact on the Supreme Court. Congress. Congressional Research Service. August 21, 2018. Accessed December 3, 2018.

Photo Credit: Wiki Commons: Matthew H. Wade
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