Supreme Court Dismisses Alabama Bid to Execute Inmate with Borderline Intellectual Disability

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama's bid to execute Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted murderer whom lower courts determined to be intellectually disabled. The court's action leaves in place lower-court rulings favoring Smith, 55, who has been on death row for roughly half his life after his 1997 conviction for beating a man to death.

The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a 2002 ruling. Justices in 2014 and 2017 cases directed states to consider additional evidence of disability in borderline situations because of possible error in IQ tests. Smith's five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78.

His lawyers said he was placed in learning-disabled classes, dropped out after seventh grade, and performed math at a kindergarten level, spelling at a third-grade level, and reading at a fourth-grade level at the time of the crime.

The justices had taken up the case to examine how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability, with arguments held in December. Rather than issue a decision, the court dismissed the appeal, an unusual step that upholds the last lower-court ruling.

The three liberal justices joined by Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett formed the majority to dismiss the case. " — Mark Sherman, Associated Press, May 21, 2026 The case is Hamm v. Smith, 24-872.