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CNN 5/22/2026

Divided Supreme Court decision bars Alabama from executing an inmate who

may be intellectually disabled

By John Fritze, CNN

Updated: 11:37 AM EDT, Thu May 21, 2026

Source: CNN

The Supreme Court on Thursday let stand an appeals court decision that barred

Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually

disabled. ****

The Supreme Court, in an unsigned opinion, took the unusual step of dismissing

an appeal, filed by Alabama, after it heard arguments in the case. A lower

court decision barring the execution of Joseph Clifton Smith will stand, and

the Supreme Court will save for another day the questions about intellectual

disability that the appeal raised.

Four justices dissented from the decision: Chief Justice John Roberts as well

as Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the brutal murder in 1997 of

Durk Van Dam in Mobile County. But Smith’s attorneys argued he was ineligible

for the death penalty under a 2002 Supreme Court precedent that determined the

execution of intellectually disabled inmates violates the 8th Amendment’s

prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

A series of tests put Smith’s IQ at just over 70, a threshold referenced in

the Supreme Court’s 2002 decision. But the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals

noted that the number isn’t a strict cutoff and that the error deviation in

the testing could potentially put Smith’s actual IQ slightly below 70. The

question for the Supreme Court was how lower courts are supposed to determine

if an inmate is intellectually disabled in edge cases when there are multiple

IQ tests.

By dismissing the case as “improvidently granted,” the court effectively said

that now is not the right time to answer that question.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s senior liberal, wrote in a concurring

opinion that lower courts correctly decided that Smith was intellectually

disabled and barred from execution under previous Supreme Court precedent.

But, she wrote, the court was “not equipped” to provide “any meaningful

guidance” based on the Smith case.

“That is because the differences between methods used to assess multiple IQ

scores raise complicated questions on which even experts may disagree,” she

wrote.

Sotomayor, who was joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson,

acknowledged that in the future, the high court may need to weigh in “with

more specific guidance” about how lower courts should analyze death row cases

involving multiple IQ scores that suggest a prisoner is on the cusp of a

state’s definition of intellectually disabled.

The decision to not decide drew a sharp rebuke from several members of the

court’s conservative wing.

“To avoid execution, Smith tried to convince courts that he is not intelligent

enough to be executed,” Thomas wrote. “Today, the Court rewards Smith’s

efforts.”

“Smith is not insufficiently intelligent to be executed,” Thomas wrote, adding

that he believed the court should overturn a 2002 precedent barring the

execution of people who intellectually disabled, which he said has “bred only

confusion and absurdity.”

Given that four justices publicly dissented, it was clear that conservative

Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett as well as the court’s

liberals, had agreed to dismiss the case.

The dismissed case “is a bit surprising given that six of the justices wrote

or joined lengthy opinions setting forth their views on the merits,” said

Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown

University Law Center. “It certainly appears that Justices Kavanaugh and

Barrett were willing to side with the death-row prisoner here, but preferred

to do so by issuing this summary, procedural disposition, rather than joining

Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence. It’s not unusual to see such punts without 63

pages of opinions on both sides; it’s more than a little unusual with it.”

The court’s decision will influence where other states draw the eligibility

line for death sentences. The Trump administration, which is pushing to

restart federal executions, sided with Alabama.

Smith confessed to murdering Van Dam, but offered conflicting versions of the

crime, according to court records. The state told the Supreme Court that Smith

“brutally beat” Van Dam with a hammer and saw “in order to steal $140, the

man’s boots, and some tools.”

Lower courts reviewed several factors, in addition to the IQ tests, and

concluded that Smith is intellectually disabled. Smith had struggled in school

since as early as the first grade, the 11th Circuit found, which led to his

teacher labeling him as an “underachiever.” When he was in fourth grade, Smith

was placed in a learning-disability class.

Smith then failed the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out of school,

according to court records, and spent “much of the next fifteen years in

prison” for burglary and receiving stolen property.

Smith’s case previously reached the Supreme Court in 2023 when Alabama asked

the justices to overturn the 11th Circuit’s decision in his favor. After

considering the case for months, the justices summarily tossed out the 11th

Circuit decision and ordered that court to review the case again.

The appeals court came to the same conclusion after further review and Alabama

appealed to the Supreme Court again last year.

_This story has been updated with additional details._

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