The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to decide a case that could fundamentally weaken protections for people with intellectual disabilities on death row. Hamm v. Smith, an Alabama capital case, hinges on a deceptively simple question: how should courts determine whether someone is intellectually disabled enough to be spared execution?
The defendant, Joseph Smith, has taken five IQ tests. His scores were 72, 74, 74, 75, and 78, all within the range clinically recognized as indicating intellectual disability. A federal court concluded Smith meets the criteria and therefore cannot be executed under the Supreme Court's landmark 2002 Atkins decision, which barred executions of people with intellectual disabilities as unconstitutional.
Alabama is fighting to execute him anyway. The state's legal strategy proposes a troubling standard: if a capital defendant has taken multiple IQ tests and any single score exceeds 70, that should disqualify an intellectual disability claim. Such a rule would contradict established clinical practice, which views intellectual disability as a holistic diagnosis requiring assessment of both IQ and adaptive functioning, not a determination based on a single test score.
This is not Alabama's first attempt to narrow protections. Since Atkins, states have repeatedly tried to engineer their way around the constitutional bar. Florida once proposed a strict cutoff at 70. Texas developed a process so disconnected from clinical reality that the Supreme Court rejected it. In both cases, the high court reaffirmed that states must rely on current clinical standards.
Yet the pattern persists, and the stakes have become more urgent. On May 14, Texas is scheduled to execute Edward Busby Jr., a case that illustrates how these battles play out in practice. Both his defense expert and the prosecution's expert agreed Busby was intellectually disabled. The trial judge disagreed and rejected the consensus assessment, clearing the way for execution.
People with intellectual disabilities are overrepresented on death row. They are more susceptible to false confessions, less able to work effectively with their legal teams, and face compounding disadvantages rooted in race and access to resources. Many drift through the criminal justice system without ever being properly evaluated, their limitations evident only in hindsight.
The challenge is not that clinical standards are hard to apply. The challenge is that courts have resisted applying them consistently. Judges, prosecutors, and juries operate from outdated or oversimplified assumptions about what intellectual disability looks like. Some defendants refuse testing altogether because the impairment preventing them from understanding its importance is the same one that could save their lives. Others rely on fellow inmates to read their legal paperwork. The system breaks down at every point where individual circumstances should matter.
If the Supreme Court sides with Alabama in Hamm, states will gain explicit license to adopt Alabama's protocol or something similar. The already fragile protections established in Atkins would collapse further. Where a clinical psychologist would diagnose disability, courts would apply a mechanical formula designed to reach a predetermined execution.
The question before the justices is not really about IQ thresholds or testing procedures. It is whether the courts will honor proportionality in punishment or continue to execute people who have always needed substantial support but managed to function just enough to slip through institutional cracks.
Author James Rodriguez: "Alabama's case is a naked attempt to execute someone the law already protects, and if the conservative majority allows it, every other state will follow."
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