this post was submitted on 21 May 2026
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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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[–] offconstantly@lemmy.zip 0 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I think this rant is very relevant and I feel inclined to follow suit!

Unfortunately the Republican Party does an exceptional job at pandering to the self aggrandizing rhetoric that their base holds so dear. The rhetoric that gives them the very clearly defined notion to believe they are superior to the left without actually doing ANYTHING to support any superiority. Humans have a hard time with self esteem and it appears a large group of Americans (MAGA) need an enemy (citizens of color, immigrants, the left) to feel any sort of self-worth all while their “leaders” lead in the most reprehensible way possible; in their own self-interest, from the rear, without regard for the people they are “leading”.

I’ve said it in other rants but from my perspective how could the western world be surprised that we’ve reached a time when almost every capitalistic country is at a point where the most savage, morally reprehensible, and self-interested people are leading the rest of us when the entire system rewards people who succeed the best at accumulating money (power) by any means necessary? Like these dudes both sides of the aisle may be interesting to talk to, in a clinical setting, but explain to me how a snake oil salesman like Trump can be reported as succeeding in life by any other metric other than accumulating capital?

[–] etherphon@piefed.world 2 points 9 hours ago

Becoming a politician has become such an easy way to make money too, it's basically the same thing as an influencer, and if you are good at social media you will probably make a good politician because that's all it takes really, because people want to believe what you say. So it's not a big wonder that we have such reprehensible assholes in government when anyone can just lie through their teeth to get on the gravy train like that dipshit Fetterman.