Left: Justice Clarence Thomas (Photo by Erin Schaff/Pool/Getty Images); Center: Joseph Clifton Smith (Alabama Dept. of Corrections). Right: Justice Neil Gorsuch (Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images).
Over the objection of Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a brief, unsigned order Monday that put on hold the execution of an intellectually disabled Alabama man convicted of murder.
Joseph Clifton Smith is on death row for the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam. According to evidence in the case, Smith fatally beat the man with a hammer and saw in order to steal his boots, some tools and $140.
In 2002, several years after Smith’s conviction, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in the case of Atkins v. Virginia that executing an intellectually disabled person is cruel and unusual punishment barred by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Thomas, who dissented in Atkins along with then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Antonin Scalia, is the only justice who participated in the case that is still on the bench.
Following the Atkins ruling, the U. S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama vacated Smith’s death sentence after concluding that he is intellectually disabled. Smith has undergone multiple rounds of IQ testing with results ranging from 72 to 78. The district court found that adjusting for testing error, Smith’s actual IQ could be as low as 69 — within the accepted range of intellectual disability. Senior U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade said that the case had been a close one that came down to expert opinions, but ruled that the combination of low IQ scores and an examination of Smith’s adaptive functioning indicates that he has been deficient throughout his life.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed and said there had been sufficient evidence for the trial court to make a finding of intellectual disability.
Alabama appealed the ruling and argued that Smith was not intellectually disabled, and said that the 11th Circuit had “bent law and logic” by focusing too heavily on the Smith’s lowest IQ score for the finding.
The Supreme Court issued an order Monday that declined to review Smith’s case and directed the 11th Circuit to clarify its opinion.
The Court said that the 11th Circuit’s opinion was open to two different interpretations. On one hand, the circuit court could have been giving conclusive weight to Smith’s low IQ score, but on the other hand, it might also be interpreted as taking a “more holistic approach to multiple IQ scores that considers the relevant evidence, including as appropriate any relevant expert testimony.”
Because the 11th Circuit was unclear on which of those two approaches it actually took, the justices were not ready to assess its correctness. Rather, they vacated the judgment of the circuit court and remanded the case for further consideration.
Thomas and Gorsuch, however, noted that rather than remanding, they would have set the case for oral argument, which would have given the justices a chance not only to review Smith’s case, but also to potentially revisit past decisions on Eighth Amendment challenges involving people with intellectual disabilities.
Over the objection of the Court’s liberal minority, the Supreme Court declined to intervene last January as Alabama used an entirely novel method of execution to put a man to death. Kenneth Eugene Smith became the first inmate put to death via nitrogen hypoxia — a controversial execution method used as an alternative to lethal injection.
This new method was authorized by a 2018 Alabama statute, and the defendant’s lawyers argued that Alabama was secretive about how the nitrogen-based execution would work. Alabama has had a long history of bungled executions, including that of Kenneth Eugene Smith.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor slammed both the Court’s majority and the State of Alabama in Kenneth Eugene Smith’s case, writing that “Alabama has selected [him] as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before.”
“The world is watching,” Sotomayor warned just before Alabama carried out the execution.
The Court’s order in the case of Joseph Clifton Smith can be seen here.
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