Supreme Court blocks state from executing inmate with borderline intellectual disability

A divided US Supreme Court has dismissed Alabama's bid to execute a convicted murderer, Joseph Clifton Smith, who lower courts had found to be intellectually disabled.

Smith beat his victim, Durk Van Dam, to death with a hammer and a saw to steal his boots, tools and $140. Van Dam’s body was found in his truck in an isolated wooded area.

The court's action leaves in place rulings favoring Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his 1997 conviction for killing Van Dam.

The Supreme Court prohibited the execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.

The issue in Smith’s case concerned individuals with multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability.

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Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. His lawyers highlighted his history in learning-disabled classes and dropping out of school after seventh grade. At the time of the crime, he performed maths at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level, and read at a fourth-grade level.

The justices had taken up the case to consider how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability, with arguments taking place in December.

Rather than issuing a decision, however, the high court dismissed the appeal – an unusual action that leaves the last lower-court ruling in place.

The three liberal justices along with Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett formed the majority to dismiss the case.

The other four conservative justices dissented, faulting the federal appeals court in Atlanta for improperly analysing the case and complaining their colleagues should have ordered a re-examination of Smith's case. The case is Hamm v. Smith, 24-872.