In 1985, Vernon Madison murdered a police officer, Julius Schulte, in Mobile, Alabama. Madison was due to be executed by lethal injection in January this year, but was given a last-minute stay of execution. After several strokes, he suffers from dementia and memory impairment, and can no longer remember committing the crime.

The Supreme Court will now hear his case. The legal issue hinges on the letter of the law. In 1986, the Supreme Court ruled that executing someone who cannot understand the reason for their execution violates the 8^th Amendment to the US Constitution’s ban on ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, and in 2016 the Circuit Court of Appeal ruled that ‘according to his perception of reality he never committed murder’ and hence cannot ‘understand the reason’ for his execution. (That ruling was later overturned by the Supreme Court, which now appears to be having second thoughts about that.)

The legal question, then, seems to turn on whether someone who can’t remember committing a crime is nonetheless capable of ‘understanding the reason’ for their execution. But let’s leave that tricky question to the Supreme Court to decide, and ask a more general, and more philosophical, question: can someone who can’t remember performing a given act be genuinely morally responsible (as opposed to satisfying the legal requirements for punishment) for that act?