{"id":11482,"date":"2025-06-09T08:33:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T15:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=11482"},"modified":"2025-06-10T09:29:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:29:53","slug":"intellectual-disability-and-the-death-penalty-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=11482","title":{"rendered":"Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty, Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Should people with intellectual disability be exempt from capital punishment? If so, who decides where and how to draw the line? The U.S. Supreme Court opened a can of worms with its 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia<\/em><\/a> that a categorical exemption is constitutionally required. Last Friday* the court decided to look into this can once again, taking up the case of Alabama murderer Joseph Smith. The case is\u00a0Hamm v. Smith<\/em>, No. 24-872<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the Supreme Court announced its decision 23 years ago, it seemed to be constitutionalizing only the yes-or-no decision, leaving the line-drawing to the states. Even while making a dubious finding of consensus on the categorical exemption, the court acknowledged disagreement on how to draw the line. Quoting an earlier decision forbidding execution of insane persons, the opinion said, “we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.”<\/p>\n

This holding of Atkins<\/em> was effectively overruled by later decisions. In the\u00a0Smith<\/em> case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has told Alabama it is drawing the line wrong. There are two problems. First, how do you determine the possible range of someone’s “true IQ” when he has multiple test scores? Second, can we declare a person intellectually disabled even though the probability that his true IQ is below 70 is vanishingly small?<\/p>\n

Looming over these two questions is a larger question. Do the questions above have right and wrong answers as a matter of federal constitutional law, or should the Supreme Court return to honoring its long-ago, much-violated promise in Atkins<\/em> that the states would have leeway in these matters?<\/p>\n

The court stated the question presented in its order: “Whether and how courts may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores in assessing an Atkins<\/em> claim.”<\/p>\n

For more background on these matters, see CJLF’s briefs in Hall v. Florida<\/em><\/a> and\u00a0Moore v. Texas<\/em><\/a>, both of which were quite wrongly decided by the Supreme Court. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.”<\/p>\n

* The “Monday” orders list was released Friday evening.\u00a0 Amy Howe explains<\/a> at SCOTUSblog:<\/p>\n

The court had originally been scheduled to release the list of orders on Monday morning at 9:30 a.m. But after a software malfunction resulted in email notifications regarding individual cases included on the order list being sent prematurely to lawyers involved in those cases, the court opted to release the entire list shortly after 6 p.m. on Friday.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should people with intellectual disability be exempt from capital punishment? If so, who decides where and how to draw the line? The U.S. Supreme Court opened a can of worms with its 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia that a categorical exemption is constitutionally required. Last Friday* the court decided to look into this can once again, taking up the case of Alabama murderer Joseph Smith. The case is\u00a0Hamm v. Smith, No. 24-872. When the Supreme Court announced its decision 23 years ago, it seemed to be constitutionalizing only the yes-or-no decision, leaving the line-drawing to the states. Even while making a dubious finding of consensus on the categorical exemption, the court acknowledged disagreement on how to draw the line. Quoting an earlier decision forbidding execution of insane persons, the opinion said, “we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.” This holding of Atkins was effectively overruled by later decisions. In the\u00a0Smith case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has told Alabama it is drawing the line wrong. There are two problems. First, how do you determine the possible range of someone’s “true IQ” when he has multiple test scores? Second, can we declare a person intellectually disabled even though the probability that his true IQ is below 70 is vanishingly small? Looming over these two questions is a larger question. Do the questions above have right and wrong answers as a matter of federal constitutional law, or should the Supreme Court return to honoring its long-ago, much-violated promise in Atkins that the states would have leeway in these matters?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,33,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-federalism","category-mental-state","category-u-s-supreme-court"],"yoast_head":"\nIntellectual Disability and the Death Penalty, Again - Crime & Consequences<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.crimeandconsequences.blog\/?p=11482\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Intellectual Disability and the Death Penalty, Again - Crime & Consequences\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Should people with intellectual disability be exempt from capital punishment? 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