The U.S. Supreme Court is demanding a lower court make a second ruling on an Alabama death row inmate's IQ score after he was previously deemed intellectually disabled and therefore unfit for execution.
In an order filed Monday, the justices sent Joseph Clifton Smith's case back to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals for review, calling its opinion "unclear" while stating the highest court's "ultimate assessment of any petition for certiorari by the State may depend on the basis" for the lower court's ruling, court documents reviewed by the Lawyer Herald read.
"The Eleventh Circuit's opinion can be read in two ways," the order read. "On the one hand, the Eleventh Circuit's opinion might be read to afford conclusive weight to the fact that the lowerend of the standard-error range for Smith's lowest IQ score is 69. That analysis would suggest a per se rule that the lower end of the standard-error range for an offender's lowest score is dispositive."
"On the other hand, the Eleventh Circuit also approvingly cited the District Court's determination that Smith's lowest score is not an outlier when considered together with his higher scores. That analysis would suggest a more holistic approach to multiple IQ scores that considers the relevant evidence, including as appropriate any relevant expert testimony."
Splitting from the majority were conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, who noted in the ruling that they would have set the case for argument.
Smith was convicted in the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County, Alabama and was handed down the death sentence the following year.
But medical professionals found that Smith had five full-scale IQ scores between 72 and 78, according to the documents. Given the standard error of measurement based on his lowest score, Smith's IQ could be as low as 69, and anything below 70 is considered intellectually disabled.
In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled executing an intellectually disabled person violated their Eighth Amendment and was considered cruel and unusual punishment.
"As the Court stated previously, this is a close case, but the evidence indicates that Smith's intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life," the U.S. District Judge Callie Granade wrote in her order in 2021, according to AL.com. "Smith's intelligence falls at the low end of the Borderline range of intelligence and at worst at the high end of the required significantly subaverage intellectual functioning."
The Alabama Attorney General's Office disagreed and in 2023 argued, "Smith's IQ scores have consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled. The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional," the outlet reported.
