Supreme Court dismisses case, sparing execution for Smith

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to revisit the standard for executing people with disputed intellectual disability, leaving in place a lower court ruling that Joseph Smith, 55, is ineligible for execution over cognitive deficits. The decision drew sharp dissen

A Supreme Court door closed on May 21, and for Joseph Smith the timing mattered.

The justices declined to revisit the rule for when intellectual disability bars the death penalty. rejecting a case about whether Alabama can execute a convicted man whose intellectual disability was disputed. The court’s dismissal. delivered in a brief. unsigned opinion. left standing a lower court decision finding Smith has sufficient cognitive deficits to render him ineligible for death after he beat a man to death in 1997.

For disability rights groups, the stakes reached beyond one prison cell. They watched closely because the same standards used in capital cases can ripple into how the broader system thinks about intellectual disability—especially when experts disagree and when IQ scores do or do not carry the final say.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the question means the existing framework remains, even as one justice called it unworkable.

In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito argued the court ignored its obligation to provide “workable rules for capital cases.” Chief Justice John Roberts, along with Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, agreed with the majority’s approach.

Justice Thomas went further, saying the court should overrule its landmark 2002 case barring execution of individuals with an intellectual disability. In that view, the 2002 decision, he wrote, “has bred only confusion and absurdity.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor. writing in agreement with the majority’s dismissal. said the alternate approaches to assessing intelligence were not tested before the dispute reached the high court. “Without the benefit of an evidentiary record or decisions below trained on the specific theories now advanced by the parties. this Court rightly concludes that it should not provide more detailed guidance beyond what this Court’s cases have previously said.”.

That debate over what counts as proof has practical consequences—because people diagnosed as intellectually disabled can qualify for a range of government support services. including special education. health care and income support. Advocates worry that if courts move toward relying solely on IQ tests for diagnoses. they may fail to account for other information about a person’s ability to navigate daily life and the age when developmental problems became evident.

Death penalty cases are a small slice of how intellectual disability is evaluated. disability rights groups say. but they can become a proving ground for legal standards. In these cases. justices often hear competing testimony from experts about whether a death row inmate has a severe enough intellectual disability to prevent execution under the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Smith, 55, has been on death row for more than two decades. His IQ testing has been inconsistent: he tested with five different IQ scores ranging from 72 to 78. Because IQ tests include an error range. lower courts said Smith’s IQ could be at or below 70. a commonly used indicator of intellectual disability.

But Alabama argued the scores told a different story. In Hamm v. Smith, the state contended that because all five test scores were above 70, Smith couldn’t prove he’s disabled by a preponderance of the evidence.

The Trump administration backed Alabama’s position as the case reached the Supreme Court. After lifting a moratorium on the federal death penalty. the Justice Department argued that states have significant discretion in defining what it means to be intellectually disabled and what a defendant must do to prove they are disabled.

Smith’s lawyers pushed back on that framing. They argued multiple IQ scores must be assessed “holistically,” including review of expert testimony about the validity of the testing. And when IQ scores alone are not conclusive, they told the court, defendants can offer additional evidence.

The court record also includes what supporters say reflects a long pattern, not a single test result. Smith was physically abused as a child. struggled academically and emotionally. and was diagnosed in the seventh grade as “educable mentally retarded. ” a term used at the time for a person with a mild intellectual disability. After dropping out of school, Smith was later sent to prison for burglary.

His capital case began when he was out on work release in 1997. According to court records, Smith and an accomplice beat Durk Van Dam to death. Smith stole Van Dam’s boots, tools and $140 in cash.

At the trial level, U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade called the mental-functioning evaluation a “close case. ” but found “the evidence indicates that Smith’s intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life.” The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

As the Supreme Court considered whether to step in. mental health organizations urged the justices to keep the inquiry from narrowing to numbers alone. They told the court there’s “broad scientific and professional agreement” on how to determine intellectual functioning. including considering more than test scores.

In a brief supporting Smith, the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association wrote that “Intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid.”

Their warning lands with added urgency because, since the Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that people with intellectual disabilities can’t be executed, 144 people have had their death sentences vacated for that reason, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a national nonprofit group.

The Supreme Court’s May 21 decision does not end the disagreement over how to measure intellectual disability. It simply preserves the legal posture that got Smith to this point—leaving in place a ruling that. on the record already developed. his cognitive deficits qualify him as ineligible for execution. For disability advocates. the question now shifts to what courts will do when future cases seek to tighten or loosen the role of IQ tests—and whether the system will keep looking at the whole picture or treat a score as destiny.

All we know from the court’s action is this: on this question, the justices chose not to revisit the standard—and Smith remains spared by the lower court’s finding that his disability was sufficiently established.

Supreme Court Joseph Smith intellectual disability death penalty Alabama Hamm v. Smith Eighth Amendment disability rights IQ tests Justice Samuel Alito John Roberts Sonia Sotomayor Death Penalty Information Center