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117

Supreme Court dismisses Alabama's bid to execute inmate with borderline intellectual disability (apnews.com)

submitted 1 day ago by CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone to c/news@lemmy.world

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.

The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.

The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because of the margin of error in IQ tests.

The issue in Smith’s case is what happens when a person has multiple IQ scores that are slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability. Smith’s five IQ tests produced scores ranging from 72 to 78. Smith had been placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade, his lawyers said. At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.

The justices had taken up the case to consider how courts should handle such borderline cases of intellectual disability. Arguments took place in December.

Rather than issue a decision, though, the high court dismissed the appeal, an unusuaI action that leaves the last lower-court ruling in place.

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[–] dogslayeggs@lemmy.world 42 points 1 day ago (2 children)

You have to really like murdering people to take a case like this all the way to the Supreme Court. This guy isn't a serial killer or mass murderer or terrorist. He's not a serial rapist or torturing psychopath. If they believed he was likely to repeat his crimes, fine, keep him behind bars for life. They tried to follow their harsh laws, got slapped down, and then kept trying again and again. Why? What are they accomplishing by killing him vs keeping him locked up?

Even regardless of the debate of whether capital punishment is moral and good for a healthy society, just because you are legally ALLOWED to kill someone doesn't mean you HAVE to.

[–] Mirshe@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Prosecutors and state governments love executing people because they keep claiming it "deters crime". It also looks fantastic on your resume to a certain stripe of voters when you can yell "I helped get rid of XX amount of DANGEROUS CRIMINALS".

You also want to kill anyone who you've already decided to kill, because otherwise they tend to have a habit of being exonerated. It's awful embarrassing to have to say "yes we framed a dozen murders on this guy who didn't do anything but steal a bike" or whatever.

[–] IamSparticles@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

They tried to follow their harsh laws, got slapped down, and then kept trying again and again. Why? What are they accomplishing by killing him vs keeping him locked up?

So some politicians can say they're "tough on crime" when they run for re-election.

Seriously.