By:Ralph Chapoco-December 10, 20254:14 pm
Article courtesy of : https://alabamareflector.com/
The U.S. Supreme Court on Oct. 9, 2024. The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday heard arguments in an Alabama death penalty case, in which the state is challenging lower court determinations that Joseph Clifton Smith, convicted of the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam, is intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty. (Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
The U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday heard arguments in an Alabama death penalty case in which the state is challenging multiple federal courts’ determinations that a death row inmate is intellectually disabled and ineligible for capital punishment.
The three liberal justices on the nation’s highest court questioned the attorneys from the Alabama Attorney General’s Office about what attorneys for the state called errors made by U.S. District Court Judge Callie V. S. Granade when she ruled in 2021 that Joseph Clifton Smith, convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam, had IQ scores that made him ineligible for the death penalty.
The state argues that Smith scored above 70 on IQ tests, one of several factors in Alabama’s administrative code used to determine intellectual disability. Robert Michael Overing, an attorney with the Alabama Attorney General’s Office who argued on behalf of the state, said both the lower court and the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals erred in their judgments
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“He didn’t come close to proving an IQ of 70 or below, with scores of 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74, but the lower courts changed the rules,” he said.
In its appeal to the nation’s highest court, attorneys for the Alabama Attorney General’s Office said that both the federal district court and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals changed the standard and that, by the results of Smith’s IQ scores, he is not intellectually disabled.
Following oral arguments, Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said Smith’s IQ scores indicate that he does not have an intellectual disability.
“The Eleventh Circuit’s approach would require states to ignore clear evidence to indulge hypotheticals designed to delay a convicted capital murderer from accountability after 27 years,” Marshall said in the news release. “The people of Alabama have the right to enforce the punishment chosen by their laws and juries, and our team has presented a strong case before the Justices to hold the line against criminals who have committed heinous murders.”
The federal district court focused on Smith’s lowest IQ scores and, along with the margin of error, ruled that his IQ could be below 70. The lower court also used other evidence for his daily life called adaptive functioning to declare that Smith had an intellectual disability.
The attorneys for Smith said that the lower courts judged the case correctly, citing Hall v. Florida, a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that a strict IQ threshold for determining intellectual disabilities in executions was unconstitutional.
“I am holding all 12 reported cases on this issue post Hall in Alabama, and there is not a single case, including the two that my friend mentioned, in which the court said, ‘We are only going to look at the test scores, we are not going to consider the other evidence,’” said Seth P. Waxman, an attorney for Smith.
The more liberal justices expressed skepticism of Overing’s argument.
“What the district court did here was not only look at the IQ scores holistically, but also other evidence of adaptive functioning, and that is precisely what our case law says what the courts are supposed to do,” said Ketanji Brown Jackson, associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the case troubled her, because Alabama did not make the same argument throughout the appeals process but used the same standard that others have used in the past.
“You didn’t argue this below,” she said. “Your own expert did exactly what you say is wrong. Your expert said he (Smith) had valid scores between 72 and 78, and he relied on all the other indicia to determine that he believed this person was not intellectually disabled.”
Overing said courts have reviewed other cases in the same way but did not grant an exception based on intellectual disability based on the other evidence besides IQ scores.
“There is certainly not an Alabama case in which the courts used the lowest score alone and said that represents a possibility of intellectual deficits,” Overing said.
Waxman also said that Alabama statute follows the decision that the U.S. Supreme Court made that allows courts to look beyond just the IQ scores of defendants when deciding if they have an intellectual disability.
“That includes evidence of intellectual functioning other than IQ test scores at least where a court, considering expert testimony, concludes that those scores alone don’t decide the issue,” Waxman said.
Associate Justice Sam Alito said that the law could be interpreted another way, that it allows states to define whether someone has an intellectual disability without violating the Eighth Amendment — which bans cruel and unusual punishment — so long as they are doing it in a way that is not permitted.
“And so long as a state does not go below that floor, a state court does not go below that floor, there’s no Eighth Amendment violation,” he said. “And so long as a state does not go below that floor, a state court does not go below that floor, there’s no Eighth Amendment violation.”
Waxman did not directly answer the question before the justices moved on.
Alabama has conducted five executions this year.
