Page:Vernon Madison v. Alabama.pdf/28

8 words, what the state court clearly meant by “insanity” was what this Court termed insanity in Ford and Panetti. What was that?

In Ford, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the execution of a person who is “insane,” and in the portion of Justice Marshall’s lead opinion that was joined by a plurality, Justice Marshall equated insanity with a mental condition that “prevents [a person] from comprehending the reasons for the penalty or its implications.” 477 U. S., at 417. Justice Powell, who provided the fifth vote for the decision, took a similar position. See id., at 422–423 (opinion concurring in part and concurring in judgment). In Panetti, which built on the holding in Ford, the Court used the term in a similar way. See 551 U. S., at 958–960. Accordingly, a defendant suffers from “insanity,” as the term is used in Ford and Panetti, if the prisoner does not understand the reason for his execution.

Today’s decision does not reject this interpretation of the state-court order; it says only that it is vacating and remanding because it is “at the least unsure” whether the state court used the term “insanity” in this way. Ante, at 14. The majority cites two reasons for its uncertainty, but both are weak.

First, the majority attributes to the state court an interpretation of the term “insanity” that was advanced by the State in this Court in its brief in opposition to the petition for certiorari. Ante, at 15. In that submission, the State argued that certiorari should be denied because petitioner had sought relief in state court under the wrong provision of state law, namely, Ala. Code §15–16–23 (2011), which authorizes the suspension of the execution of an inmate who is “insane.” The State argued that petitioner’s memory loss did not render him “insane” within the meaning of this statute and that if he wished to argue that the Eighth Amendment bars the execution of an inmate who cannot remember his crime, he “should have filed a