The Supreme Court’s latest death penalty action drew attention not because it issued a sweeping ruling, but because it refused to let Alabama move forward against Joseph Smith. In a 5-4 split, the court dismissed the case as “improvidently granted,” leaving in place a lower-court ruling that spared Smith from execution.
What made the result unusual was the coalition behind it. Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three Democratic appointees to form the majority, an outcome that stood out on a court where Republican appointees usually support execution-related appeals.
Why the case mattered
The dispute centered on whether courts may consider the combined effect of multiple IQ scores when a prisoner argues that intellectual disability makes execution unconstitutional. Alabama had sought Supreme Court review in its effort to execute Smith for the 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam.
The practical result of the dismissal is straightforward. Smith keeps the protection of the lower court ruling, at least for now, and Alabama does not get the decision it wanted from the justices.
A procedural dismissal, not a merits ruling
The court’s order gave no full explanation. It simply said the writ of certiorari was dismissed as improvidently granted, which means the justices concluded after briefing and argument that review should not have been taken up in the first place.
That kind of dismissal is not unheard of, but it remains notable because it leaves the underlying dispute unresolved. Here, it also produced a rare win for a death-row prisoner at a court that has generally been inhospitable to such claims.
The separate opinions showed a sharp divide
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, explaining why the dismissal made sense on the record before the court. She said the lower court materials were not detailed enough for the justices to give meaningful guidance on how to assess multiple IQ scores.
Sotomayor also warned that the dissenting justices’ reading of the law was “incomplete and potentially misleading.” She wrote that the Eighth Amendment does not set a single formula for weighing IQ scores, and that the court was not equipped in this case to offer a broad rule.
Alito pressed for guidance
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the main dissent, joined in full by Justice Clarence Thomas and largely by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch. Alito argued that the court missed a chance to help lower courts navigate a difficult area of death penalty law.
He said the court’s silence would only deepen confusion around precedents that protect intellectually disabled prisoners from execution, including Atkins, Hall, and Moore. His warning suggested that if the court keeps avoiding the issue, future petitions may seek to overturn those rulings altogether.
Thomas went even further in a solo dissent. He argued that Atkins has “bred only confusion and absurdity” and said it should be overruled because, in his view, nothing in the Constitution supports it. No other justice joined that position.
What Kavanaugh and Barrett’s votes may signal
Kavanaugh and Barrett did not write separately to explain their votes, so their precise reasoning remains unclear. Still, the outcome suggests they were willing to side with the court’s liberal wing on this procedural question, even though they are generally seen as more likely to align with Republican-appointed colleagues in capital cases when the merits are directly before them.
That distinction matters because the court’s decision was procedural, not a nationwide ruling on the legal standard itself. If a future case forces the justices to reach the merits, the lineup could look different, and the court could still rule against a prisoner without formally discarding existing precedent.
For now, the case leaves Alabama without the execution it sought and leaves the broader legal fight over IQ evidence and intellectual disability unresolved. It also shows that, even on a court usually favorable to death penalty appeals, procedural doubts can still produce an outcome that blocks execution.
Read more at: www.ms.now
