The Supreme Court will revisit on Wednesday how states assess intellectual disabilities to decide which capital defendants should be spared the death penalty.
The justices will hear arguments in an Alabama case that involves how I.Q. tests should be used to assess mental capacity. It comes two decades after the court barred the execution of people with mental disabilities as a violation of the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
That ruling, in Atkins v. Virginia, gave states leeway to determine their own processes for deciding who was intellectually disabled. It led to follow-up cases from Florida and Texas in which the court further limited capital punishment.
But the composition of the Supreme Court has changed since then with the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal, in 2020 and the retirement in 2018 of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was part of a coalition with the liberal wing that generally supported narrowing the use of the death penalty. They were replaced by two nominees of President Trump, who cemented the court’s conservative supermajority.
The issue in the Alabama case the justices hear on Wednesday is how states and lower courts should evaluate cases in which defendants have taken I.Q. tests multiple times and received varying results, as well as the extent to which they must consider a broader evaluation of evidence in deciding if a person is disabled.
The case deals with Joseph Clifton Smith, who was sentenced to death after being convicted of murdering a man he planned to rob in 1997. In the years before and after the murder, Mr. Smith took five I.Q. tests with scores ranging from 72 to 78. The key part of Alabama’s law on mental disability turns on whether defendants score 70 or lower on the test. But a lower court found Mr. Smith was intellectually disabled, in part because the tests have a margin of error.
The outcome will likely determine whether Mr. Smith is executed or spends the rest of his life on death row. It also has implications for how courts apply the death penalty in other states. Medical and disability groups have warned that a narrow, test-focused approach conflicts with past Supreme Court rulings and could increase the risk that people with intellectual disabilities are executed.
Mr. Smith’s legal team, led by former solicitor general Seth P. Waxman, told the court in filings that when I.Q. scores are “inconclusive, courts must consider other evidence regarding intellectual functioning.”
Twenty-seven states permit the death penalty, but they differ in how exactly they determine intellectual disability.
Rather than focusing on one low I.Q. score to allow a defendant to be spared from execution, the state says officials should be allowed to consider the cumulative effect of multiple scores. In court filings, Attorney General Steve Marshall of Alabama told the justices that Mr. Smith’s tests, viewed together, demonstrated he was not intellectually disabled.
The Trump administration, which lifted a moratorium on the federal death penalty in January, is supporting the state and will participate in Wednesday’s arguments. D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, said the Supreme Court’s past decisions do not require states to ignore a defendant’s complete range of test scores.
“Similar to polling in an election, multiple I.Q. test scores often produce a more accurate image than any single test score does in isolation,” the administration said in a court filing.
Wednesday’s case began when Mr. Smith challenged his death sentence, saying he could not be executed because he was mentally disabled.
As a child, Mr. Smith was physically abused by his father and stepfather, according to court records. He struggled in school and was assigned to a special class for students with intellectual disabilities.
Mr. Smith dropped out of school after failing seventh and eighth grades and spent much of the next 15 years in prison. At 19, he went to prison for six years for burglary. He was released on parole but was found to have violated the terms of his release and returned to prison, before being released again just two days before the murder.
That day, Mr. Smith and a partner lured Durk Van Dam, who they had heard was carrying cash, to an isolated area in the woods in Mobile County, where they attacked him with a hammer and saw, according to court records. After beating him to death, they stole $140, and Mr. Smith took Mr. Van Dam’s boots and pawned the tools from his truck, the records show.
Under Alabama law, to avoid execution, defendants like Mr. Smith are required to show “significant subaverage intellectual functioning at the time the crime was committed, to show significant deficits in adaptive behavior at the time the crime was committed, and to show that these problems manifested themselves before the defendant reached the age of 18.”
After lengthy litigation in state and federal court, a district court judge in 2021 found that Mr. Smith was intellectually disabled. When a score is close to, but higher than 70, the judge said he “must be allowed to present additional evidence of intellectual disability.”
With even one score of 72, the judge noted that it could mean I.Q. was actually as low as 69 because of the standard error of measurement. The district court judge also found Mr. Smith deficient in social, interpersonal skills, self-direction, independent living, and academics.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit affirmed the ruling, citing two earlier Supreme Court decisions that said that when a test score, adjusted for the margin of error, is 70 or less, the defendant must be able to provide additional evidence of intellectual disability.
In response to an earlier request from the Supreme Court in the matter, the 11th Circuit said its finding was based on a “holistic approach” and review of evidence — not just a single low score.
Ann Marimow covers the Supreme Court for The Times from Washington.
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