Supreme Court dismisses Alabama death penalty IQ case

by · UPI

May 21 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court Thursday dismissed an appeal from Alabama in a death row case by declining to look at how IQ scores affect capital cases.

The decision saves the life of inmate Joseph Clinton Smith, 55, whose intellectual deficiencies make him ineligible for execution. Smith has taken five IQ tests, and four of them showed his IQ in the 70s. Smith was convicted of beating Durk Van Dam to death with a hammer during a robbery in 1997.

Generally, an IQ of below 70 indicates intellectual disability and makes a person ineligible for the death penalty. U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade vacated Smith's death sentence in 2021, calling it a "close case." The judge said that the error range of his lowest test score at 72 could mean his IQ is below 70. A federal appeals court agreed in 2023.

Alabama had argued that because all five of his scores were above 70, Smith's attorneys can't prove he's disabled.

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The court's opinion was unsigned, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor, backed by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a concurring opinion saying that the court shouldn't use the case to look at how the courts use IQ scores.

She said the question of how to use cases of multiple scores was "neither meaningfully raised nor passed upon," so the justices had little choice but to pass.

"There is no reason for this Court to leapfrog the experts, state courts and federal lower courts to provide conclusive guidance at this level of detail in the first instance," Sotomayor wrote. "Thus, for the reasons given above, the Court is correct today to dismiss this case as improvidently granted."

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote separate dissenting opinions.

Thomas said the court was rewarding Smith for trying to convince the court he's not intelligent enough, meaning he's "not insufficiently intelligent to be executed."

Alito's opinion was joined by Thomas, though Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch joined it in part. Alito said passing on the case leaves an "important question" unanswered.

"Instead, the Court shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases," Alito wrote. "In doing so, the Court disservices its own death penalty jurisprudence, States' criminal-justice systems, lower courts and victims of horrific murders."

Smith was abused physically as a child, USA Today reported. In the seventh grade, he was diagnosed as "educable mentally retarded," which was used at the time to mean a person had mild intellectual disability.

He quit school and was later imprisoned for burglary. He was on work release when he and an accomplice killed Van Dam. He stole the victim's boots, tools and $140 in cash.

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