The U.S. Supreme Court has said death row prisoners must have “rational understanding” that they are about to be executed and why, but lawyers for a condemned Alabama inmate say stroke-induced dementia has left their client unable to pass that test.

A three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta seemed skeptical of the state of Alabama’s arguments that Vernon Madison, 65, didn’t need to remember the crime he was convicted of to have a rational understanding of it.