In Hamm v. Smith, No. 24-872, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the question of whether and how courts may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores in assessing whether a defendant who had been sentenced to death had an intellectual disability such that executing the defendant would violate the Eighth Amendment. Although the Supreme Court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted, Justice Alito cited the Model Penal Code in dissenting from the Court’s decision to leave that question unanswered.
In that case, a criminal defendant was convicted of first-degree murder in Alabama state court and sentenced to death. A few years after the Alabama Supreme Court rejected the defendant’s evidence of intellectual disability and affirmed his sentence, the U.S. Supreme Court held in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), that the execution of an individual who had an intellectual disability violated the Eighth Amendment.
On the defendant’s petition for federal habeas relief, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama considered, among other things, the results of multiple IQ tests taken by the defendant and testimony from both the state and defense experts interpreting those results differently, and determined that the defendant’s “IQ scores could not rule out the possibility that [the defendant] is intellectually disabled.” The District Court held that the defendant had “shown by a preponderance of the evidence that he has significantly subaverage intellectual functioning and significant deficits in adaptive behavior,” and thus had an intellectual disability and could not constitutionally be executed. The Eleventh Circuit affirmed, explaining that the District Court had properly considered the defendant’s multiple IQ test results, taken together and in the context of expert testimony.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant Alabama’s petition for a writ of certiorari and initially agreed to consider a question raised in the United States’ amicus brief, namely, “[w]hether and how courts may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores in assessing an Atkins claim,” but eventually issued a per curiam decision dismissing the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted.
In a dissent, Justice Alito argued that the case presented an opportunity for the Court to explain how courts should evaluate Atkins claims when the defendant had multiple IQ test scores. Justice Alito noted that, if the Court continued “to shy away from opportunities to provide workable doctrine,” it should not be surprised if it soon received petitions to overrule Atkins and related decisions. He pointed out that the Court had received a petition for certiorari in Ohio v. Ford, O.T. 2019, No. 19-1191, which asked the Court to replace its current Atkins doctrine with a rule barring the execution of only those who met the Model Penal Code’s definition of “insane.”
Read the full opinion here.