Supreme Court orders new test of IQ scores when resentencing death sentences

The U.S. Supreme Court has ordered a federal appeals court to reconsider how it decided that an Alabama man on death row was mentally disabled and should not be executed after checking multiple IQ scores.

In an order Monday, the court said it was yet to hear Alabama's appeal of the Eleventh Circuit's decision to overturn the death sentence given to Joseph Clifton Smith for beating a man to death with a hammer during a 1997 robbery could.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled that Smith had proven his intellectual disability with an IQ score of 72 because the standard error range of the test could give him a score as low as 69. But the justices announced in an unsigned order the appeals court's decision can be read in two ways.

The justices said this could either give conclusive weight to the fact that the low end of the standard error range for Smith's lowest IQ score is 69, or they cited approvingly the district court's finding that Smith's lowest score overall was not an outlier with his higher scores.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch said they heard Alabama's appeal.

The state argued that the appeals court erred in relying on this downward departure.

The Supreme Court's 2002 decision Atkins v. Virginia believed it was unconstitutional to execute someone with a mental disability because of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Alabama and many other states understand the significantly below-average intellectual performance Atkins The requirement is an IQ of 70.

It asked the justices to overturn or at least clarify two Supreme Court decisions: Hall vs. Florida And Moore v. Texas – which set the standards for determining intellectual disability Atkins.

In Room, The court adopted a three-tiered definition of intellectual disability from the medical community, which included significantly below-average mental performance, deficits in adaptive performance, and the occurrence of deficits during the developmental period. In MooreThe court said that the assessment of intellectual ability must take into account the standard error of measurement of the IQ test and move to the second stage when the low end of an offender's score range falls at or below 70.

The case is Hamm v. Smith, USA, No. 23-167.