Supreme Court struggles over whether Alabama can execute man found to be intellectually disabled

By MARK SHERMAN and KIM CHANDLER WASHINGTON AP The Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled over how courts should decide borderline cases of whether convicted murderers are intellectually disabled and should be shielded from execution Related Articles Calibri font becomes the latest DEI target as Rubio orders return to Times New Roman While scientists race to examination spread of measles in US Kennedy unravels hard-won gains Georgia electoral process board rejects rule change on using hand-marked paper ballots Georgia Democrat Eric Gisler contends upset state House win in historically Republican district Elon Musk says DOGE was only somewhat flourishing and he wouldn t do it again There was no clear outcome apparent after the justices heard two hours of arguments in an appeal from Alabama which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts detected is intellectually disabled Joseph Clifton Smith has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in The justices in cases in and held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests The issue in Smith s occurrence 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 reported 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 Seth Waxman representing Smith stated the justices his client received a evaluation of mental retardation then the commonly accepted term for mental disability in the seventh grade Alabama other states and the Trump administration all are asking the high court which is more conservative than it was a decade ago to cut back on those earlier decisions Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented in both cases and Alito and Thomas sounded as if they would side with Alabama A ruling for Smith would lead to messy court fights for other death row inmates where everything is up for grabs in every episode Alito explained Alabama lawyer Robert M Overing declared Smith s affair should be an easy win for the state because Smith never scored below on any IQ test There is no way that he can prove an IQ below Overing noted Alabama appealed to the Supreme Court after lower courts ruled that Smith is intellectually disabled looking beyond the test scores The justices had previously sent his circumstance back to the federal appeals court in Atlanta where the judges affirmed that they had taken a holistic approach to Smith s matter seemingly in line with high court decisions But the justices reported in June they would take a new look at the development Waxman urged the justices to affirm the lower courts rather than issue a decision that would effectively rely exclusively on test scores and rule out additional evidence in cases with borderline IQ scores Justice Elena Kagan explained courts have to consider the additional evidence but that s not to say you have to accept it 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 identified dead in his pickup truck Prosecutors declared 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 occurrence Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of or below along with notable or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and the onset of those issues before the age of A decision in Hamm v Smith - is expected by early summer Chandler informed from Montgomery Ala Follow the AP s coverage of the U S Supreme Court at https apnews com hub us-supreme-court