Supreme Court Dismisses Alabama Death Penalty Appeal Over 5 IQ Scores
Updated
Updated · The Washington Post · May 21
Supreme Court Dismisses Alabama Death Penalty Appeal Over 5 IQ Scores
17 articles · Updated · The Washington Post · May 21
The justices threw out Hamm v. Smith on procedural grounds, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that bars Alabama from executing Joseph Clifton Smith.
The case centered on how courts should weigh five IQ scores—75, 74, 72, 78 and 74—when a defendant claims intellectual disability makes the death penalty unconstitutional.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the record was too thin to give meaningful guidance, while Justice Samuel Alito said the court's silence deepens confusion.
Lower courts had found Smith intellectually disabled using a holistic review that paired his score of 72, with a 3-point margin of error, with evidence of major adaptive deficits dating to childhood.
The dismissal leaves unresolved a question affecting borderline intellectual-disability claims in 27 death-penalty states, even though the court barred executing intellectually disabled people in 2002.
The Supreme Court declined to set a rule. What now for death row inmates with borderline IQ scores?
Why does the justice system clash with medical science over intellectual disability in death penalty cases?