The justices said an appeals court ruling that found Smith was intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty was “unclear.'
This photo shows a sign that reads, "HELP," in the window of an inmate cell seen during a tour along with state officials at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Ala., Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2019. State officials have toured the state prison that Alabama's corrections commissioner says illustrates the state's problem with aging facilities.
Smith has been on death row in Alabama for over 25 years. He was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death for the November 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam in Mobile County.ruled that Smith was intellectually disabled and legally couldn‘t be executed. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2023, citing Smith’s five full-scale IQ scores.In its Monday order, the U.S.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch voted to review the case and set it for arguments in D.C. But, their views were in the minority among the nine justices.Smith’s court battle has been waged in the federal court system for years, while his lawyers from the Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama have argued that Smith is intellectually disabled and can’t be put to death under precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court.
“As the Court stated previously, this is a close case, but the evidence indicates that Smith‘s intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life,” the judge wrote in her order. “Smith’s intelligence falls at the low end of the Borderline range of intelligence and at worst at the high end of the required significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.”
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