WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama cannot execute Joseph Clifton Smith, allowing lower court decisions vacating his death sentence to remain in place after courts found him intellectually disabled.
According to the report, Smith has spent nearly three decades on Alabama’s death row following his conviction in a 1997 murder case. The Supreme Court dismissed Alabama’s appeal in a 5-4 decision, leaving intact earlier rulings from lower courts that determined Smith was ineligible for execution under existing constitutional protections.
The report states that the decision allows a prior ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit to stand. That court had affirmed U.S. District Judge Callie Granade’s findings that Smith was intellectually disabled and therefore protected from execution under the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which barred the execution of intellectually disabled individuals.
According to the report, Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson were joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett in dismissing the case as “improvidently granted,” commonly referred to as a “DIG.”
The report further notes that Justice Samuel Alito issued a dissent joined in whole or in part by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. In the dissent, Alito argued that the Supreme Court has not clearly explained how courts should evaluate multiple IQ test scores when deciding whether someone is intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for the death penalty.
In a concurring opinion, Sotomayor, joined by Jackson, wrote that the Court was “not equipped in this case to provide any meaningful guidance on how courts should assess multiple IQ scores,” arguing that the issue has not been fully litigated in the lower courts.
Thomas separately called for Atkins v. Virginia to be overturned entirely, writing that “nothing in the text or history of the Constitution supports Atkins,” the report states.
According to the report, the ruling leaves Smith’s death sentence vacated and effectively ends Alabama’s effort to execute him based on the current litigation.
The report also notes that the case drew attention to broader debates surrounding intellectual disability determinations in death penalty litigation, particularly how courts evaluate IQ testing and medical evidence in capital punishment cases.
In addition to the Alabama ruling, the Supreme Court denied requests to halt executions scheduled in Tennessee and Florida. According to the report, Tennessee later halted the execution of Tony Carruthers after officials were unable to establish an IV line, leading Gov. Bill Lee to issue a one-year reprieve.
The report states that the ruling leaves existing constitutional protections for intellectually disabled individuals facing execution intact while signaling continued disagreement among the justices over the future scope of death penalty restrictions.
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