Alabama is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to let it proceed with this week's scheduled execution of a 67-year-old inmate whose lawyers say can no longer remember his crime.

The Alabama attorney general's office told justices in a filing Monday that the state's high court last year ruled the execution could proceed and should do so again.

Vernon Madison is scheduled to be put to death Thursday by lethal injection for the 1985 killing of Mobile Police Officer Julius Schulte.

Madison's lawyers say strokes and dementia have left Madison unable to understand his looming execution. They argued the court should delay the planned injection to review whether executing someone in such a mental condition violates evolving standards of decency and a ban on cruel and unusual punishment.