MAY 21, 2026
Supreme Court dismisses Alabama's appeal, leaving intact ruling that bars execution of inmate found likely intellectually disabled
The Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama's appeal in Hamm v. Smith, issuing an unsigned per curiam opinion saying the case had been improvidently granted. The decision leaves in place an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that bars the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith, who was convicted of a 1997 murder and whose IQ scores lower courts found placed him likely within the intellectually disabled threshold. Four justices — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — dissented from the dismissal.
Joseph Clifton Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County, Alabama, which the state described as a beating with a hammer and saw carried out to steal $140, boots, and tools. Smith's attorneys argued he was ineligible for execution under the Supreme Court's 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia, which held that executing intellectually disabled individuals violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.
Smith's five recorded IQ scores ranged between 72 and 78, all above Alabama's threshold of 70. A federal district court ruled that the margin of error in IQ testing meant scores between 70 and 75 should satisfy the Atkins standard; the 11th Circuit upheld that ruling and also cited additional factors, including Smith's documented struggles in school beginning in first grade, placement in a learning-disability class in fourth grade, and failure of the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out. Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court a second time after the 11th Circuit reached the same conclusion on remand.
The court dismissed the case without resolving the underlying question of how lower courts should weigh multiple IQ scores in borderline intellectual disability cases. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote a concurrence stating the case was not the proper vehicle for guidance on that question, and that if a conflict among states or lower courts emerges, the court may need to weigh in. Given that four justices dissented publicly, CNN reported that Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court's three liberals, effectively formed the majority favoring dismissal.