The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s appeal in Hamm v. Smith as “improvidently granted,” leaving intact lower-court rulings that bar the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith, a death-row prisoner found by federal courts to be intellectually disabled.
The Supreme Court on Thursday set aside Alabama’s appeal in Hamm v. Smith without ruling on the merits of how states should evaluate intellectual disability in borderline death-penalty cases.
In a 5–4 vote, Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberal justices to dismiss the case as improvidently granted—an unusual step that leaves the last lower-court decision in place. The court’s action means Alabama cannot carry out Smith’s execution under the existing rulings in his favor.
The dispute centered on how courts should treat multiple IQ scores that are slightly above the commonly cited cutoff around 70, particularly given test margins of error and other evidence of adaptive-functioning limitations. According to reporting by The Associated Press and The Washington Post, Smith took five IQ tests over his lifetime that yielded scores in the low-to-mid 70s and higher.
Because the court dismissed the appeal on procedural grounds, it did not issue a binding decision that would change national standards for determining intellectual disability in capital cases.
