Supreme Court narrowly spares 'intellectually disabled' murderer from execution

In a rare move on Thursday, the Supreme Court spared the life of an "intellectually disabled" death row inmate, dismissing an appeal by Alabama officials who claimed the man's multiple IQ scores show he is competent and eligible for execution.

The justices were narrowly divided, 5-4, in allowing a lower court ruling to stand that determined death for Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted first-degree murderer, would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment.

The high court did not formally explain its decision.

More than 20 years ago, the high court outlawed the execution of intellectually disabled people convicted of capital crimes.

The heart of the Smith case involved a dispute over who qualifies as intellectually disabled and how to analyze conflicting intelligence quotient – also known as IQ – test scores in making the determination.

The decision on Thursday left that question unanswered.

“The court is not equipped in this case to provide any meaningful guidance on how courts should assess multiple IQ scores,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

While state officials had asked the court to set out a clear standard, Sotomayor suggested a case-by-case approach, considering legal precedent and “the views of medical experts,” should continue.

“If a conflict among the states or lower courts emerges and a case properly presents the issue, it may be appropriate for this court to weigh in with more specific guidance,” she wrote. “The court rightly decides it is inappropriate to do so in this case.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.

"The court shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases," Justice Alito wrote in a dissent joined by Thomas, Gorsuch and Roberts. "In doing so, the court disserves its own death-penalty jurisprudence, states' criminal justice systems, lower courts, and victims of horrific murders."

Justice Thomas wrote separately to call for a reinstatement of the death penalty for intellectually disabled people.

Smith, who will now spend life behind bars, confessed to a 1997 murder during a robbery, but challenged his death sentence on ground he has had "substantially subaverage intellectual functioning" since a young age.

He has taken five separate IQ tests over nearly 40 years, scoring 75 in 1979, 74 in 1982, 72 in 1998, 78 in 2014, and 74 in 2017.

People below 70 are generally considered to have an intellectual disability, but major American medical groups urge a holistic assessment that also looks at social and practical skills.

The groups note that standardized test scores alone should not be conclusive. Smith's score of 72, for example, could be 69 when factoring the 3-point margin of error.

Smith, who alleges he suffered physical and verbal abuse as a child, consistently functioned at two grade-levels below his placement in school, according to court documents. Smith's school classified him as "Educable Mentally Retarded" in 7th grade before he eventually dropped out.

Two lower federal courts ruled that a holistic analysis of Smith’s IQ scores and other evidence, including his behavioral history and school records, proved he is intellectually disabled.

"Joseph Smith is not intellectually disabled, and the Eighth Amendment does not override the death sentence he earned for murdering Durk Van Dam," Alabama argued in its brief to the court. "Whether and how to weigh multiple IQ scores is left to state discretion."

The state argued intellectual disability can only be proven by an IQ score of 70 or less by a preponderance of the evidence.

By one estimate, as many as 20% of the 2,100 people on death row in the U.S. may have some degree of intellectual disability, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.