Supreme Court spares Alabama inmate by avoiding decision

The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a death-penalty appeal involving Joseph Clifton Smith, leaving in place a federal appeals court ruling that prevents his execution—for now. The justices did not issue a full opinion, but separate writings from six justic

For Joseph Clifton Smith, Thursday didn’t bring the clean, final answer that comes with a Supreme Court ruling. It brought something else—quiet, procedural refusal. The justices announced they would not decide Hamm v. Smith, and that meant Smith will not be killed.

Smith had already won in the federal appeals court that heard his case. The Supreme Court’s move to dismiss Hamm “as improvidently granted,” using the Court’s precise legal language, kept that lower-court victory standing.

The Court did not issue a single opinion in Hamm. Still, six justices joined at least one of three concurring or dissenting opinions, offering clues about what went wrong—or, in their view, what should have been decided.

At the center of Hamm was a question that turns on a number: whether Smith’s IQ is low enough to qualify as intellectually disabled under Atkins v. Virginia, a 2002 decision that held it is unconstitutional to execute someone with an intellectual disability.

In Hamm, the justices appear to have concluded they were not well-positioned to determine Smith’s IQ. That uncertainty was sharpened by the way the evidence was presented in the lower courts. Justice Sonia Sotomayor. in a concurring opinion. suggested Alabama may have lost because its litigation was poorly matched to the standards it later argued were required.

Sotomayor pointed out that none of the expert witnesses who testified in the lower court—including Alabama’s own expert—used the same methods to determine Smith’s IQ “that Alabama now claims is necessary.”

Her point landed on a core theme of Supreme Court procedure: when constitutional questions are not fully aired through the lower courts. the risk of an uncorrectable mistake rises. Sotomayor argued that her Court was right to “exercise caution” rather than hand down a definitive ruling that was not fully vetted.

For death row defendants and their families. those words translate into time—a delay that can feel like relief and pressure at the same time. With the Supreme Court’s final authority on constitutional law. the justices usually hesitate to step in when the record isn’t properly prepared. Thursday’s decision means the constitutional protections recognized in Atkins remain intact for now.

Republican justices, too, were not all aligned. The dissenting opinions from Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito reflected internal differences on how hard the Court should push against Atkins-type claims.

Only Thomas, writing a dissent that was joined by no one else, called for Atkins to be overruled. In that sense, he was the most extreme voice. But the broader message was complicated by how the case’s other opinions addressed the Court’s past death-penalty doctrine.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has taken hardline positions in death penalty cases, appeared to suggest in Bucklew v. Precythe (2019) that the Court should discard decades of its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. In his view. the Court should replace it with a new rule that would allow the government to impose very high penalties for minor crimes. Yet in Hamm, it was not a clean echo.

Of the three opinions in Hamm, only Thomas cited Bucklew. Gorsuch neither joined Thomas’s opinion nor did he join the parts of Alito’s opinion that called for harsher rules in Atkins cases. The implication. drawn from how opinions were stitched together. was that Gorsuch’s Bucklew approach may not have found a partner among the justices in this particular dispute.

Alito wrote a bifurcated opinion—major parts of it were joined by a total of four justices: Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts, Thomas, and Gorsuch. But only Thomas joined the part of Alito’s opinion that called for the most limits on Atkins.

The parts of Alito’s opinion joined by four justices focused closely on the unusual facts in Hamm.

On those facts, Smith’s claim of intellectual disability was described as marginal. The courts considering his case evaluated IQ in relation to the Atkins threshold. often focusing on whether a capital defendant’s IQ is below 70 to determine intellectual disability. In Smith’s case. however. he took several tests measuring his IQ somewhere in the 70s. and none showed an IQ of 70 or below.

Under earlier Supreme Court death penalty cases. testing slightly above 70 is not necessarily fatal to an Atkins claim. in part because IQ tests have a margin of error and may overestimate a test subject’s IQ. Alito’s position. as reflected in his opinion. argued that someone like Smith—who took multiple tests that showed an IQ above 70—may be executed.

In the portion joined only by Thomas, Alito also argued that “‘higher scores are likely to be more indicative’ of a person’s intelligence than the lower scores,” a rule that could potentially doom capital defendants with a range of scores, including some below 70.

Still, the most striking feature of Alito’s approach may be what he did not do. He focused intensely on Hamm’s specific minutiae without launching a broader assault on Atkins or on the general rule that intellectually disabled people may not be executed.

Elena Kagan. Brett Kavanaugh. and Amy Coney Barrett were silent in Hamm—meaning they did not join any of the opinions. That silence makes it harder to map where the full Court stands on Atkins. But with the current majority choosing not to take up the question in a way that would settle Smith’s IQ and with multiple justices refusing to use the occasion for sweeping revision. the direction appears narrower than a wholesale rollback.

Taken together, the decision’s practical effect is clear: Atkins is not on the Supreme Court’s immediate checklist.

The Court’s Republican majority has often shown hostility to precedents established by more liberal justices. and at times the justices have appeared to follow a pattern of overruling earlier decisions and converting dissents by justices like Antonin Scalia or Thomas into majority holdings. Thursday’s dismissal doesn’t fit that shape. Instead. it leaves a vulnerable point untouched—an unsettled record. an IQ dispute that wasn’t fully resolved. and a case that doesn’t end with the certainty of an execution date.

For Smith, the result is blunt: the Supreme Court will not decide Hamm v. Smith, and he will not be killed as a result of this case going forward. For others on death row, it’s also a message that the constitutional protections recognized in Atkins may continue to hold—at least for now.

Supreme Court Hamm v. Smith Joseph Clifton Smith Alabama death penalty Atkins v. Virginia intellectual disability IQ Texas?