Hamm v. Smith

Questions presented

SCOTUS records, cert granted 6 Jun 2025

1. Like most States, Alabama requires that offenders prove an IQ of 70 or less to satisfy the intellectual-functioning prong of Atkins v. Virginia. This case was not close: Smith scored 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74 on five full-scale IQ tests. There is no way to conclude from these five numbers that Smith's true IQ is likely to be 70 or below. So the courts below required Smith to prove only that his IQ "could be" 70 and required the State to bring evidence "strong enough" to "foreclose" and "rule out the possibility" of intellectual disability. The first question presented is:
2. Whether, under a proper application of Atkins, a State can require a claimant to prove an IQ of 70 or less by a preponderance of the evidence. Evaluating multiple IQ scores is "complicated," and "this Court has not specified how" to do it. In the State's view, five scores are more accurate than one, and there are ways to account for that fact. The courts below disagree. The district court relied on Smith's 72 ± 3 to find that his IQ "could be" 69. On remand, the Eleventh Circuit's "holistic approach" asked whether Smith had scores of "about" 75 or less. Counting four out of five scores between 72 and 75, the court found "consistent evidence" that Smith "may" qualify as mildly disabled. Thus, the court "followed the law's requirement," in its view, to "move on" to Smith's adaptive deficits. The second question presented is:
3. Whether courts evaluating multiple IQ scores must find that every valid score of "about" 75 or less supports an Atkins claim.

Opinion summary

Etalia.ai summary of the majority opinion

The Court dismissed the writ of certiorari as improvidently granted. The case involved Joseph Smith’s claim that he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed under Atkins v. Virginia. In a concurrence, Justice Sotomayor explained that the Court should not use this case to announce a rule for how courts must evaluate multiple IQ scores, because the issue was not meaningfully litigated below, the parties agreed there is no single required method, and no clear lower-court conflict appeared. The lower courts had assessed Smith’s IQ scores and other evidence together, including expert testimony and adaptive functioning, rather than using one fixed mathematical formula. The concurrence said that approach fit the Court’s existing precedents and that the Court lacked a proper record for broader guidance.

Dissent summary

Etalia.ai summary of the dissenting opinions

Justice Thomas dissented. He argued that Atkins should be overruled because nothing in the Constitution supports it, and he described Smith’s crimes and the lower courts’ handling of his sentence as wrong. He said Smith never scored 70 or below on the five IQ tests in the record and that the lower courts improperly treated his scores as if they could be discounted by the possibility that all of them were wrong. In Thomas’s view, that approach was statistically indefensible, and the Court should not have left in place a ruling that prevented Smith’s execution.