Washington– Divided supreme court Alabama’s governor on Thursday rejected Alabama’s request to allow him to execute a murder convict who lower courts found to be mentally disabled.
The court’s action leaves lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row for nearly half his life after being convicted of beating a man to death in 1997.
The Supreme Court banned the execution of people with intellectual disabilities in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases from 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error on IQ tests.
The problem in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores just above 70, which has been widely accepted as a sign of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests showed scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith was placed in classes for learning disabilities and left school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he was doing math in kindergarten, spelling in third grade and reading in fourth grade.
The justices took up the case to consider how courts handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability. The arguments took place in December.
But instead of issuing a decision, the Supreme Court rejected the appeal, an unusual procedure that leaves the lower court’s final ruling standing.
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, criticizing the federal appeals court in Atlanta for improperly analyzing the case and complaining that their colleagues should have ordered the appeals court to reconsider Smith’s case.
The case is Hamm v. Smith, 24-872.