[24-872] Hamm v. Smith

Hamm v. Smith

Justia · Docket · oyez.org · YouTube

Argued on Dec 10, 2025.

Petitioner: John Q. Hamm, Commissioner, Alabama Department of Corrections. Respondent: Joseph Clifton Smith.

Advocates: Robert M. Overing (for the Petitioner)

Harry Graver (for the United States, as amicus curiae, supporting the Petitioner)

Seth P. Waxman (for the Respondent)

Facts of the case (from oyez.org)

Joseph Clifton Smith was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in Alabama. Years later, Smith filed a federal habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, seeking to overturn his death sentence on grounds that he is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed under the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. The central issue in Smith’s case involved determining whether he met the three-prong test for intellectual disability: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, significant deficits in adaptive behavior, and manifestation of these qualities before age 18.

Smith's IQ testing revealed multiple scores—72, 74, 75, 74, and 78—that fell within or near the range associated with intellectual disability when accounting for standard error of measurement. His experts testified that four of his five scores were consistent with mild intellectual disability, while the state’s expert, Dr. King, argued that Smith’s multiple scores placed him in the borderline range just above intellectual disability. After extensive evidentiary hearings featuring competing expert testimony about both Smith’s IQ scores and his adaptive functioning deficits, the district court found Smith intellectually disabled.

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama granted Smith’s habeas petition and vacated his death sentence. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed this decision, but the Supreme Court granted certiorari and remanded the case, asking the Eleventh Circuit to clarify whether its ruling relied solely on the lower end of Smith's IQ score range or on a holistic analysis of all evidence. On remand, the Eleventh Circuit explained that its reasoning was based on a holistic analysis.

Question

When a capital defendant has taken multiple IQ tests with varying results, how should courts evaluate the cumulative effect of those scores to determine whether the defendant has significantly subaverage intellectual functioning under Atkins v. Virginia?