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MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Lawyers for an Alabama death row inmate asked an appellate court Wednesday to halt his upcoming execution, saying strokes and dementia have rendered him mentally incompetent in the 30 years since he was convicted of killing a Mobile police officer. Attorneys for Vernon Madison, 65, filed the stay request with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Madison is scheduled to get a lethal injection Thursday evening at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. Madison was convicted in the 1985 killing of Mobile police officer Julius Schulte. Prosecutors said Madison crept up and shot Schulte in the back of the head as Schulte sat in his police car after responding to a call about a domestic dispute involving Madison. "Over the course of the past year, Mr. Madison has suffered from multiple strokes that have resulted in significant cognitive decline, suffers from a major vascular neurocognitive disorder, or vascular dementia, and does not rationally understand why the State of Alabama is attempting to execute him," attorneys for Madison wrote. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment to execute prisoners who don't have a rational understanding that they are about to be executed and why. The request to the appellate court comes after a federal judge this week refused to halt the execution. U.S. District Judge Kristi K. DuBose this week agreed with a lower court that Madison was competent and could be executed. Dubose cited testimony from a court-appointed expert. She also noted Madison's reported response that, "my lawyers are supposed to be handling that," when the warden came to read him the death warrant. She wrote that the lower court was not unreasonable in finding Madison competent. Attorneys for Madison argued the lower court erred and did not fully consider the scope of his dementia. A defense expert found that Madison had an IQ of 72. Attorneys also told the appellate court that Madison's speech is slurred and he is legally blind and can no longer walk independently because of the damage to his brain. If Madison is executed, he would be the second inmate put to death in Alabama this year after a lull of more than two years because of difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs and litigation over the death penalty. Christopher Eugene Brooks was executed in January for the 1992 rape and beating death of 23-year-old Jo Deann Campbell.

Alabama death row inmate asks court to halt his execution