Supreme Court Considers Tougher Standards for Intellectual Disability in Death Penalty Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to review whether it will impose stricter criteria for convicted murderers attempting to prove they should be spared from execution due to intellectual disability. This development follows an order released early Friday, attributed to a technological glitch at the court.
The case at hand involves Joseph Clifton Smith, who was sentenced to death in Alabama for the 1997 murder of a man. Smith’s prior appeals were upheld by lower federal courts, which determined he is intellectually disabled—thereby barring his execution under existing standards.
Scheduled for hearing this fall, the case marks a potential shift in Supreme Court precedent established over 23 years ago, which protects intellectually disabled individuals from the death penalty. The central issue in this upcoming deliberation revolves around borderline cases, specifically those whose IQ scores slightly exceed 70, the widely accepted threshold for intellectual disability.
In previous rulings in 2014 and 2017, the Supreme Court had relaxed certain requirements for proving intellectual disability in death penalty cases. However, the current appeal from Alabama suggests a potential tightening of these standards, raising concerns among advocates for the intellectually disabled about the implications for future cases.
This incident is not the first time the court has experienced early releases of case information due to technical errors. In the past year, an opinion related to an abortion case was also accidentally published ahead of schedule.
The Supreme Court’s decision on this matter could have significant repercussions for death penalty jurisprudence and the treatment of individuals with intellectual disabilities in the criminal justice system.
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