The Supreme Court is set to hear oral argument on Dec. 10 in a case that could impact how prisoners attempt to prove the type of intellectual disability that would allow them to avoid a death sentence.
In 2002, the court held in Atkins v. Virginia that sentencing intellectually disabled convicts to death violated the Eighth Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishment.” How prisoners go about proving that disability can vary, but doing so may involve showing that their IQ falls below a particular threshold.
The case currently before the court—Hamm v. Smith—focuses on how the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit weighed multiple IQ scores in a murder case.
Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death after a jury found him guilty of brutally murdering a man. Under Alabama law, Smith could demonstrate low intellectual functioning with an IQ of 70 or below and substantial deficits in adaptive behavior.
The more controversial part of its decision was how it weighed Smith’s IQ scores. Although each of the scores was above the 70-point threshold, the court said it wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Smith was intellectually disabled. Given the margin of error for IQ tests, the court said Smith’s score could actually be as low as 69.
Considering those deficits, the appeals court said Smith shouldn’t receive the death penalty.
Alabama told the Supreme Court that this was the wrong approach and that Smith had a burden of proving disability by a preponderance of the evidence. Instead of focusing on the error range for a lower IQ score, courts should instead weigh the cumulative effect of multiple scores, Alabama said.
Katherine Robertson, an attorney with the Alabama attorney general’s office, told The Epoch Times that courts had strayed from the actual meaning of the Eighth Amendment.
“I think what we’re looking for is just a return to what the Eighth Amendment actually requires, and a move away, ultimately, from all this judge-made precedent,” she said. She add that “our position in our office philosophically has always been: if you’re competent enough to stand trial, then ... how do you get special treatment when it comes to the penalty phase?”
While she wasn’t asking the Supreme Court to overrule its precedent in Atkins, she said it would have to revisit it.
“I think they’re going to have to revisit it,” she said, suggesting that it could foster a return to the true meaning of the Eighth Amendment.
“Mentally retarded defendants in the aggregate face a special risk of wrongful execution,” he said.
It’s unclear how the Supreme Court will rule but Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision in 2002.
Smith’s attorneys, meanwhile, defended the appeals court decision and said courts should take a “holistic approach” to evaluating intellectual disability. Regardless of whether IQ scores are conclusive, they said, defendants should be able to present additional evidence surrounding their intellectual functioning.
