Smith v. Dunn
The Supreme Court refused to halt the execution of an Alabama death-row inmate who said his intellectual disability prevented him from timely choosing nitrogen hypoxia over lethal injection as his method of execution.
Justice Sotomayor agreed the law required denial but wrote separately to sharply criticize Alabama's compressed timeline and haphazard notification process for giving inmates a meaningful choice of how they would be executed.
How it got here: Smith sued in federal court in 2019; the Eleventh Circuit ruled against him; he applied to Justice Thomas for an emergency stay, who referred the application to the full Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Willie B. Smith III was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection in Alabama. When the state legislature authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an alternative execution method in 2018, it gave death-row inmates only a 30-day window to elect that option. Smith, who has intellectual disabilities and significantly below-average intellectual functioning, said he could not understand the election form and missed the deadline. He sued in 2019 seeking to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia instead of lethal injection, but Alabama opposed his request.
The question before the Court
Could an Alabama death-row inmate with intellectual disabilities claim the right to choose a different execution method after missing the state's 30-day election window because, he said, his disability prevented him from understanding the form?
The Court's answer
No — the Court denied Smith's request to pause his execution. The Eleventh Circuit had identified legal reasons why Smith had not met the standard required to halt an execution, and the Supreme Court agreed those reasons controlled, denying both the stay and his request for the Court to hear the case.
Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to make clear that agreeing with the legal outcome is not the same as approving of Alabama's conduct. She flagged serious concerns about the state giving inmates as little as 72 hours in practice to make an irreversible, life-or-death decision, and called Alabama's method of notifying death-row inmates — including those with intellectual disabilities — inadequate to the gravity of the choice being offered.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Death-row inmates in Alabama who missed the 30-day window to elect nitrogen hypoxia face the same legal barrier Smith did. The case raises unresolved questions about whether states that give inmates a choice of execution method must do more — especially for people with intellectual disabilities — to ensure that choice is genuinely available, not just nominally offered.
What changes now
Alabama proceeded with Smith's execution by lethal injection on October 21, 2021. His underlying lawsuit challenging Alabama's administration of the nitrogen hypoxia election process remains pending in the lower courts. The Supreme Court's order does not resolve the merits of his claim; it only declined to pause the execution while that challenge continues.
What this does not decide
The Court did not decide whether Alabama's 30-day election window or its notification process violates the Constitution or any other law. It also did not decide whether Smith's intellectual disability entitled him to a different or extended process. Those questions remain open in the lower courts.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor agreed that the law required denying Smith's stay, but wrote separately to express serious concern about how Alabama administered the 30-day election window for choosing nitrogen hypoxia. She noted that inmates, including those with intellectual disabilities, reportedly received the election form only days before the window closed — sometimes 72 hours or fewer. She concluded that once a state decides to give death-row inmates a choice of execution method, it must make that choice genuinely meaningful.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court accepted the Eleventh Circuit's legal conclusion that Smith had not established the grounds needed to pause an execution — chiefly, that he was likely to succeed in his underlying lawsuit challenging Alabama's notification process. The statement does not detail those grounds but accepts them as controlling.
- To obtain a stay of execution, a condemned person must show, among other things, a meaningful chance of winning the underlying legal claim. Because Smith's lawsuit was still pending and had not succeeded at any level, courts concluded he had not cleared that bar.
- Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to note that even where the law compels denial, serious fairness concerns arise from Alabama's approach: the state's 30-day window was already tight, but evidence showed inmates often received the election form just days before the deadline — giving some people as little as 72 hours to decide how they wanted to die.
- She emphasized that a state's decision to offer death-row inmates a choice of execution method creates an obligation to make that choice real — particularly for inmates with intellectual disabilities who may not be able to understand the forms used to make the election.