Supreme Court hears Alabama’s appeal to execute a man found to be intellectually disabled
WASHINGTON AP The Supreme Court will hear arguments Wednesday in a matter that could make it harder for convicted murderers to show their lives should be spared because they are intellectually disabled The justices are taking up an appeal from Alabama which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts discovered is intellectually disabled and shielded from execution The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in Joseph Clifton Smith has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in The issue in Smith s development is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability Smith s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from to Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade his lawyers disclosed At the time of the crime he performed math at a kindergarten level spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level The Supreme Court has held in cases in and that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled The justices had previously sent his occurrence back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta where the judges affirmed that they had taken a holistic approach to Smith s development seemingly in line with the high court ruling But the justices commented in June they would take a new look at the event Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall stated Smith hasn t met his burden of showing an IQ of or below and the state wrote in its brief that the discussion of a holistic approach is an unjustified expansion of the Supreme Court rulings He has multiple scores in the s Marshall disclosed in a phone interview He mentioned the question is about how to address a continuum of scores I don t think picking and choosing those at the bottom are the way that the court will ultimately go Marshall reported President Donald Trump s administration and states are supporting Alabama in the scenario Smith did not meet his burden of proving his IQ was likely or below Solicitor General D John Sauer wrote on behalf of the Republican administration Smith s lawyers argue the lower courts followed the law in conducting a holistic assessment of all relevant evidence in a circumstance with borderline IQ scores Rights groups focused on disabilities wrote in a brief supporting Smith that intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the beating death of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County Van Dam was located dead in his pickup truck Prosecutors reported he had been beaten to death with a hammer and robbed of his boots and tools A federal judge in vacated Smith s death sentence though she acknowledged this is a close development Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of or below along with important or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and the onset of those issues before the age of
