Alito, J., dissenting
was not entitled to relief because the claim that he was delusional was untrue is not the same as arguing that petitioner could be executed even if his dementia rendered him incapable of understanding the reason for his execution. The majority cites no place where the State made the latter argument in the state court.[1] And even if the
- ↑ Unable to cite any place where the State made this argument to the state court, the Court claims that the State did so in the Eleventh Circuit. Ante, at 6–7, n. 1. But even if that were so, it is hard to see what that would have to do with the question whether the state court thought that dementia could not satisfy the Ford/Panetti test. And in any event, the Court does not fairly describe the State’s argument in the Eleventh Circuit. The State’s Eleventh Circuit brief argued that merely suffering from a mental condition like dementia is not enough to render a prisoner incompetent to be executed; instead, the prisoner must also establish that he lacks a rational understanding of the reason for his execution. See Brief for Appellee in No. 16–12279 (CA11), pp. 37–38 (Brief for Appellee) (“The fairest reading of the state court’s opinion is that it assumed that dementia and memory loss caused by strokes is a mental illness and went straight to the rational understanding question. Thus, it is not that the trial court refused to
delusions. See Pet. for Suspension in No. CC–85–1385.80 (C. C. Mobile Cty., Ala., Feb. 12, 2016), p. 1 (“Mr. Madison has long suffered from serious mental illness, marked by paranoid delusions and other disabilities”); id., at 5 (“At Mr. Madison’s trial, Dr. Barry Amyx established that Mr. Madison suffers from a delusional disorder that has existed since he was an adolescent”); ibid. (“This well-documented history of paranoia was one of the reasons Dr. Amyx concluded that Mr. Madison had a delusional disorder in a paranoid, really a persecutory type” (internal quotation marks omitted)); ibid. (“Dr. Amyx noted that Mr. Madison exhibited delusional thinking about… medication and believed that he was being used as a guinea pig in medical experiments”); id., at 6 (emphasizing a “more recent observation” that “ ‘Mr. Madison consistently presented with paranoid delusions’ ”); id., at 8 (“Mr. Madison exhibited delusional and disoriented behavior in June 2015”); id., at 14 (“decades of delusional thinking and psychotropic medications”); see also Pet. for Suspension in No. CC–85–1385.80 (C. C. Mobile Cty., Ala., Dec. 18, 2017), pp. 6–7 (detailing similar statements).
This line of argument fell apart when petitioner’s own expert testified that he found no indication that petitioner was “[e]ither delusional or psychotic.” Tr. 56 (Apr. 14, 2016).
