Supreme Court Hears IQ Disability Death Penalty Case

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in a closely watched death penalty case involving Joseph Clifton Smith, a 55-year-old Alabama inmate who has spent more than two decades on death row after his 1997 conviction for the robbery and beating death of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. The central question before the justices was how lower courts should evaluate multiple IQ test scores to determine if a defendant qualifies as intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for execution under the court's 2002 ruling in Atkins v. Virginia.

Smith was convicted of murdering Van Dam, a Michigan resident whose body was found beaten with a hammer inside his pickup truck. Prosecutors said the crime involved the theft of about $150, Van Dam's boots and power tools. While Smith's guilt is not in dispute, the case hinges on his eligibility for capital punishment. Federal courts, including a district judge in 2021 and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on two occasions, have ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled, vacating his death sentence in favor of life imprisonment. Alabama appealed, arguing that the lower courts improperly expanded the Atkins standard by...