The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Thursday declined to overturn a federal appeals court ruling in favor of Joseph Smith, who has been on Alabama’s death row for more than 20 years.
In a 5-4 ruling, the court dismissed Alabama’s petition for review. That order leaves in place a ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals that Smith is intellectually handicapped and can’t legally be executed.
SCOTUS Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the majority’s opinion.
“In cases presenting multiple IQ scores, courts should continue to consider multiple IQ scores in light of this Court’s precedents and “‘the views of medical experts.’” If a conflict among the States or lower courts emerges and a case properly presents the issue, it may be appropriate for this Court to weigh in with more specific guidance about the permissible method or methods by which courts must analyze such scores,” Sotomayor said. “The Court rightly decides that it is inappropriate to do so in this case. I therefore concur in the decision to dismiss the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted.”
SCOTUS Associate Justice Clarence Thomas said in his dissent that SCOTUS was “rewarding Smith’s efforts” to avoid execution by trying to convince courts he’s not intelligent enough.
“In 1997, Joseph Clifton Smith murdered Durk Van Dam. The trial court, accepting the jury’s recommendation, sentenced Smith to death. Smith lost his appeal in 2001. But a year later, in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304 (2002), this Court held for the first time that convicted murderers like Smith cannot be executed if they are deemed insufficiently intelligent, which the Court suggested would require that they had an IQ of 70 or below. Such persons could not be executed, the Court said, even if they “know the difference between right and wrong,” even if they “are competent to stand trial,” and even if they are intelligent enough to deserve other “criminal sanctions.” The Court did not pretend that the Constitution had ever been understood to impose such a rule. Just 13 years earlier, it had acknowledged the opposite. But the Court set aside the Constitution and imposed a new rule anyway,” Thomas said.
“The result was predictable: To avoid execution, Smith tried to convince courts that he is not intelligent enough to be executed. Today, the Court rewards Smith’s efforts. It dismisses the State’s petition challenging the lower courts’ vacatur of his death sentence under Atkins. But Smith is not insufficiently intelligent to be executed. He can read at an 11th-grade level. He took five IQ tests and did not once receive a score of 70 or below, instead scoring 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74. The lower courts held that he could not be executed based only on the hypothetical possibility that these IQ scores were all wrong and that his IQ is in fact 70 or below. I join JUSTICE ALITO’s opinion because it persuasively explains why that approach is statistically indefensible. As this case shows, though, Atkins has bred only confusion and absurdity. Nothing in the text or history of the Constitution supports Atkins. It should be overruled.”
SCOTUS Associate Justice Samuel Alito also dissented from the majority, saying the court was doing a disservice to murder victims.
“I respectfully dissent from the Court’s decision to leave this important question unanswered. At the very least, we should reverse the lower courts’ erroneous analysis of Smith’s scores and remand for a fresh consideration of his Atkins claim using any sound method,” Alito said. “Even if our decision went no further, we would provide clarity and coherence to one aspect of our Atkins doctrine. Instead, the Court shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases. In doing so, the Court disserves its own death penalty jurisprudence, States’ criminal-justice systems, lower courts, and victims of horrific murders.”
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