Supreme Court dismisses bid to execute inmate with borderline intellectual disability
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Key Points:
- The Supreme Court dismissed Alabama's request to execute Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted murderer found to be intellectually disabled by lower courts, leaving those rulings intact.
- Smith, on death row since 1997, has multiple IQ scores ranging from 72 to 78, slightly above the traditional cutoff of 70 for intellectual disability, complicating the legal assessment.
- The Court's 2002 ruling prohibits executing intellectually disabled individuals, with subsequent decisions requiring consideration of additional evidence in borderline IQ cases.
- The dismissal was unusual, with a majority including three liberal justices and Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett, while four conservative justices dissented, criticizing the appeals court's analysis.
- The case, Hamm v. Smith (24-872), centered on how courts should handle borderline intellectual disability cases in death penalty contexts.