Opinion of the Court
have described, the parties disagreed about those matters. See supra, at 4–8. But at this Court, Madison accepted Alabama’s position on the first issue and Alabama accepted Madison’s on the second. See, e. g., Tr. of Oral Arg. 11, 36. And rightly so. As the parties now recognize, the standard set out in Panetti supplies the answers to both questions. First, a person lacking memory of his crime may yet rationally understand why the State seeks to execute him; if so, the Eighth Amendment poses no bar to his execution. Second, a person suffering from dementia may be unable to rationally understand the reasons for his sentence; if so, the Eighth Amendment does not allow his execution. What matters is whether a person has the “rational understanding” Panetti requires–not whether he has any particular memory or any particular mental illness.
A
Consider initially a person who cannot remember his crime because of a mental disorder, but who otherwise has
whether the Eighth Amendment bars executing Madison because he has no “memory of his commission of the capital offense.” Pet. for Cert. iii. The second question asked whether that Amendment bars his execution because his “vascular dementia” and “severe cognitive dysfunction” prevent him from either remembering his crime “or understanding the circumstances of his scheduled execution.” Ibid. So the first question concerned whether memory loss alone could form the basis of a Panetti claim and the second whether the varied consequences of dementia could do so. The body of the petition, to be sure, devoted more space to the first question. But it clearly referenced the second. See Pet. for Cert. 18 (“[T]his Court has never sought to constrain the world of maladies that can give rise to a finding that a prisoner is incompetent to be executed”); id., at 25 (“[C]ourts have recognized dementia and attendant cognitive decline and memory impairment as a basis for a finding of incompetency to be executed”). And in any event, the number of words spent on each is not what matters. Our Rule states that the Court will consider “[o]nly the questions set out in the petition, or fairly included therein.” This Court’s Rule 14.1(a). Here, we consider, in order, the two questions set out in Madison’s petition.
