Hamm v. Smith
The Supreme Court wiped out a ruling that had blocked the execution of an Alabama death-row prisoner claiming intellectual disability, finding that the appeals court's reasoning was too ambiguous to evaluate properly.
The case goes back to the appeals court to explain whether it used a rigid, single-score rule or a broader review of all IQ scores — a methodological question the Supreme Court says it has never settled.
How it got here: A federal trial court vacated Smith's death sentence; the Eleventh Circuit affirmed; Alabama's corrections commissioner asked the Supreme Court to step in, and the Court granted the petition to GVR.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death in Alabama for murder. He has taken five IQ tests over the years, scoring between 72 and 78 each time. Because the law bars executing people with intellectual disabilities — a condition generally associated with an IQ of 70 or below — Smith argued he qualifies for that protection when measurement error is factored in. A federal trial court agreed and threw out his death sentence; the federal appeals court upheld that ruling.
The question before the Court
How should courts decide if a death-row prisoner is intellectually disabled when that prisoner's multiple IQ test scores all fall just above 70, the typical cutoff for protection from execution?
The Court's answer
The Court did not decide whether Smith is intellectually disabled or whether his execution would be lawful. Instead, it found that the appeals court's written opinion was too ambiguous to assess properly on those underlying questions.
The appeals court could be read as adopting a rigid rule — that the low end of the measurement-error range for a prisoner's single lowest score automatically controls — or as using a broader approach that weighs all IQ scores together. Because the Court has never settled which method is correct, and because the answer to that threshold question could change whether the Court would even take the case for full argument, it vacated the appeals court's judgment and sent the case back for a clearer explanation of what reasoning was actually used.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Death-row prisoners across the country rely on IQ testing to claim protection from execution under a decades-old rule barring execution of intellectually disabled people. This order signals that the Supreme Court is scrutinizing which method courts must use when a prisoner's multiple IQ scores cluster just above the legal threshold — a question that could determine life or death for those in similar situations.
What changes now
The Eleventh Circuit must clarify on remand whether it applied a per se rule (the low end of the measurement-error range for the lowest score alone is decisive) or a holistic approach (all scores weighed together). Once the appeals court issues a clearer ruling, Alabama may again ask the Supreme Court to hear the case. Smith remains on death row in the meantime, with no final resolution of whether his execution is constitutionally barred.
What this does not decide
The Court does not decide whether Smith is intellectually disabled, whether his execution would violate the Constitution, or which method courts must use when evaluating multiple IQ scores near the threshold. All of those questions remain open for the appeals court and, potentially, the Supreme Court on a later petition.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent in part — Justice Thomas
Justices Thomas and Gorsuch would have gone further than the majority's GVR approach. Rather than vacate and remand for clarification, they would have granted the full petition for certiorari and set the case for oral argument — meaning they wanted the Court to decide the underlying legal question about how to evaluate multiple IQ scores now, rather than wait for the appeals court to rewrite its opinion first.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Eighth Amendment bars executing people with intellectual disabilities under Atkins v. Virginia (2002). Determining who qualifies turns in large part on IQ scores, which always carry a 'standard error of measurement' — a statistical range reflecting that no single test score is perfectly precise.
- The Court's earlier decision in Hall v. Florida (2014) said that when a prisoner has taken multiple IQ tests, each score must be evaluated alongside its standard error of measurement, and that analyzing multiple scores together is 'a complicated endeavor.' The Court has never gone further to specify a single required method for doing that analysis.
- The appeals court's opinion could mean two very different things. It might have adopted a per se rule — that the low end of the error range for the single lowest score (69, derived from a test score of 72) is by itself legally dispositive. Or it might have used a holistic approach, treating the lowest score as consistent with the others and weighing all the evidence together rather than mechanically applying one number.
- Which reading is correct matters enormously: a per se rule and a holistic standard could yield different outcomes for Smith and would set different precedents for future cases. Because the Supreme Court's decision about whether to hear the full merits would depend on which method the appeals court actually used, the ambiguity had to be resolved first.
- Rather than guess at the appeals court's reasoning or decide the underlying method question itself, the Court vacated the appeals court's judgment and sent the case back with instructions to clarify its analytical basis before any further Supreme Court review.