Divided Supreme Court decision bars Alabama from executing an inmate who may be intellectually disabled

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — The Supreme Court on Thursday let stand an appeals court decision that barred Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually disabled.

The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, took the unusual step of dismissing an appeal, filed by Alabama, after it heard arguments in the case. A lower court decision barring the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith will stand, and the Supreme Court will save for another day the questions about intellectual disability that the appeal raised.

Four justices dissented from the decision: Chief Justice John Roberts as well as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal murder in 1997 of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. But Smith’s attorneys argued he was ineligible for the death penalty under a 2002 Supreme Court precedent that determined the execution of intellectually disabled inmates violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

A series of tests put Smith’s IQ at just over 70, a threshold referenced in the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision. But the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals noted that the number isn’t a strict cutoff and that the error deviation in the testing could potentially put Smith’s actual IQ slightly below 70. The question for the Supreme Court was how lower courts are supposed to determine if an inmate is intellectually disabled in edge cases when there are multiple IQ tests.

By dismissing the case as “improvidently granted,” the court effectively said that now is not the right time to answer that question.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, wrote in a concurring opinion that lower courts correctly decided that Smith was intellectually disabled and barred from execution under previous Supreme Court precedent. But, she wrote, the court was “not equipped” to provide “any meaningful guidance” based on the Smith case.

“That is because the differences between methods used to assess multiple IQ scores raise complicated questions on which even experts may disagree,” she wrote.

Sotomayor, who was joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, acknowledged that in the future, the high court may need to weigh in “with more specific guidance” about how lower courts should analyze death row cases involving multiple IQ scores that suggest a prisoner is on the cusp of a state’s definition of intellectually disabled.

The decision to not decide drew a sharp rebuke from several members of the court’s conservative wing.

“To avoid execution, Smith tried to convince courts that he is not intelligent enough to be executed,” Thomas wrote. “Today, the Court rewards Smith’s efforts.”

“Smith is not insufficiently intelligent to be executed,” Thomas wrote, adding that he believed the court should overturn a 2002 precedent barring the execution of people who intellectually disabled, which he said has “bred only confusion and absurdity.”

Given that four justices publicly dissented, it was clear that conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as the court’s liberals, had agreed to dismiss the case.

The dismissed case “is a bit surprising given that six of the justices wrote or joined lengthy opinions setting forth their views on the merits,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “It certainly appears that Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett were willing to side with the death-row prisoner here, but preferred to do so by issuing this summary, procedural disposition, rather than joining Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence. It’s not unusual to see such punts without 63 pages of opinions on both sides; it’s more than a little unusual with it.”

The court’s decision will influence where other states draw the eligibility line for death sentences. The Trump administration, which is pushing to restart federal executions, sided with Alabama.

Smith confessed to murdering Van Dam, but offered conflicting versions of the crime, according to court records. The state told the Supreme Court that Smith “brutally beat” Van Dam with a hammer and saw “in order to steal $140, the man’s boots, and some tools.”

Lower courts reviewed several factors, in addition to the IQ tests, and concluded that Smith is intellectually disabled. Smith had struggled in school since as early as the first grade, the 11th Circuit found, which led to his teacher labeling him as an “underachiever.” When he was in fourth grade, Smith was placed in a learning-disability class.

Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school, according to court records, and spent “much of the next fifteen years in prison” for burglary and receiving stolen property.

Smith’s case previously reached the Supreme Court in 2023 when Alabama asked the justices to overturn the 11th Circuit’s decision in his favor. After considering the case for months, the justices summarily tossed out the 11th Circuit decision and ordered that court to review the case again.

The appeals court came to the same conclusion after further review and Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court again last year.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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