The US Supreme Court has thrown out Alabama's challenge to a judicial finding that death row inmate Joseph Clifton Smith is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution under the US Constitution. In a single-sentence, unsigned order, the court dismissed the state's petition for review in Hamm v Smith, effectively leaving in place a lower court ruling that blocked Smith's execution.
Smith was convicted of capital murder for a 1997 killing. His five IQ scores range from 72 to 78, all around the bottom fifth percentile of the population. A federal judge found that his lowest score could be as low as 69 when accounting for the standard error of measurement, and allowed him to present additional evidence of mental capacity. The judge concluded that Smith had significant deficits in adaptive behaviours, including social and interpersonal skills, independent living, and schooling, with problems manifesting from an early age.
The case centred on how to assess multiple IQ scores that fall above and below the cutoff for execution, and how far courts should go in evaluating additional evidence of intellectual disability. Had the court sided with Alabama, it could have led to more executions of people with intellectual disabilities, who are overrepresented on death row.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the decision to dismiss the case, while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined part of Alito's dissent. Sotomayor wrote that the lower court's determination was 'correct, or at least, very plausible', adding that the Supreme Court is 'not equipped to provide any meaningful guidance' on assessing multiple IQ scores.
The ruling follows a 2002 Supreme Court precedent that executing an intellectually disabled person violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Later rulings in 2014 and 2017 allowed courts to consider IQ scores close to 70 along with other evidence of intellectual disability. Alabama had argued that Smith's IQ scores were above the state's cutoff of 70, but the lower court applied a holistic approach, considering both test scores and adaptive deficits.
