The Supreme Court on May 21 dismissed a closely watched case over whether Alabama can execute a convicted murderer whose IQ scores fall in a narrow band just above the traditional threshold for intellectual disability, leaving in place a lower court ruling that spares the man's life and drawing sharp dissents from four justices who said the court ducked its duty.
The case, Hamm v. Smith, centered on Joseph Smith, a 55-year-old who has sat on death row for more than two decades after he and an accomplice beat a man named Durk Van Dam to death in 1997 and stole his boots, tools, and $140 in cash. Smith was on work release from a burglary sentence at the time of the killing.
By dismissing the case in a brief, unsigned opinion, the justices left unresolved a question that has divided lower courts since 2002: how, exactly, should states determine whether a defendant is too intellectually disabled to execute? The result is a legal gray zone that frustrates prosecutors, confuses courts, and, as USA Today reported, has now spared a man whose own judge called his case "close."
Smith has been tested five times. Every score landed between 72 and 78, all above the commonly used cutoff of 70 that signals intellectual disability. Alabama argued the numbers spoke for themselves: because every result exceeded 70, Smith could not prove disability by a preponderance of the evidence.
Lower courts disagreed. U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade acknowledged it was a "close case" but ruled that IQ tests carry an inherent error range, meaning Smith's true score could fall at or below 70. Judge Granade wrote that "the evidence indicates that Smith's intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life." The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
Smith's background filled in the picture. He was physically abused as a child, struggled in school, and was diagnosed in seventh grade as "educable mentally retarded", the clinical term used at the time for mild intellectual disability. He later dropped out and ended up in prison for burglary before the 1997 killing.
The American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association filed a brief supporting Smith, writing that "intellectual disability diagnoses based solely on IQ test scores are faulty and invalid." Mental health organizations told the court there is "broad scientific and professional agreement" that determining intellectual functioning requires looking beyond raw scores.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas. Alito argued the court ignored its obligation to provide "workable rules for capital cases", a pointed charge that the majority chose avoidance over clarity.
Thomas went further. He wrote that the Supreme Court's landmark 2002 decision barring execution of the intellectually disabled "has bred only confusion and absurdity," and urged the court to overrule it entirely. That 2002 ruling rested on the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
The dissent reflects a broader frustration among conservative justices who believe the court's refusal to set clear standards hands enormous discretion to lower courts and expert witnesses while leaving prosecutors guessing about what the law actually requires.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately, agreeing with the decision not to revisit the execution standard but for a different reason. She said the alternate approaches to assessing intelligence that the parties advanced had not been tested in the courts below.
"Without the benefit of an evidentiary record or decisions below trained on the specific theories now advanced by the parties, this Court rightly concludes that it should not provide more detailed guidance beyond what this Court's cases have previously said."
In other words, even the justices who agreed on the outcome could not agree on why.
The Justice Department backed Alabama's position. It argued that states have significant discretion in defining intellectual disability and in determining what a defendant must prove to establish that disability. The Trump administration, which lifted a moratorium on the federal death penalty, supported Alabama's right to carry out Smith's sentence.
The court's dismissal handed the administration a loss on this front. The lower court ruling stands, and Smith remains ineligible for execution under that ruling. For a White House that has signaled a tough-on-crime posture, the outcome underscores the limits of executive influence once a case reaches the judiciary's own procedural machinery.
That tension between executive priorities and judicial process has surfaced repeatedly in recent months, from appellate clashes over deportation flights to broader debates about the scope of judicial power.
Since the Supreme Court's 2002 decision, 144 people have had their death sentences vacated on intellectual disability grounds, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The court left it to individual states to define the criteria, and the result has been exactly the patchwork that Alito and Thomas described.
Some states rely heavily on IQ cutoffs. Others weigh adaptive behavior, childhood history, and clinical evaluations. The lack of a uniform federal standard means a defendant's fate can depend as much on geography as on the facts of his case.
Disability rights groups followed Hamm v. Smith closely, in part because the ruling's implications reach beyond criminal law. Death penalty cases, these groups noted, represent only a "tiny fraction of the universe of intellectual disability assessments." A decision tightening the definition of disability for capital cases could have rippled into education, benefits, and civil rights law.
The court's decision to sidestep the question avoids that broader disruption, but it also avoids the clarity that lower courts, prosecutors, and defense attorneys have been waiting for since 2002. Chief Justice Roberts, who joined the dissent, has himself spoken publicly about the need for the judiciary to maintain public confidence. Dismissing a case the court chose to hear does not inspire it.
The practical effect is straightforward. Joseph Smith, who beat a man to death for boots and pocket money, will not face execution. His IQ scores, all above 70, were not enough for Alabama to overcome the lower court's finding that measurement error and a lifetime of cognitive deficits placed him within the protected category.
For the family of Durk Van Dam, the dismissal means the sentence imposed by an Alabama court more than two decades ago will not be carried out, not because the court found the punishment unjust, but because the justices decided they should never have taken the case in the first place.
The procedural nature of the dismissal is worth noting. The Supreme Court increasingly resolves, or avoids resolving, high-profile disputes through procedural off-ramps rather than merits rulings. Whether through the shadow docket or through cases dismissed as improvidently granted, the court finds ways to act without explaining itself fully.
That pattern frustrates observers across the political spectrum, but it carries a particular cost in capital cases, where the stakes are irreversible and the legal standards remain unsettled a quarter-century after the court first imposed them.
Republican lawmakers have grown increasingly vocal about judicial accountability in other contexts. Senator Eric Schmitt's recent call for the impeachment of a federal judge reflected broader conservative frustration with courts that seem to act beyond their mandate, or, as in this case, refuse to act at all.
Four justices said the court failed its duty. The majority said the case wasn't ready. And a convicted killer who scored above the IQ threshold on every test he ever took remains shielded from the sentence a jury imposed.
Alito was right about one thing: if the court won't write workable rules, someone else will, and it won't be the people who have to live with the consequences.
