Supreme Court to listen to Alabama attraction in push to execute intellectually disabled man | EUROtoday

The Supreme Court will hear an attraction from Alabama’s Attorney General’s Office in its push to execute an intellectually disabled man, in keeping with an order launched early on Friday.

Joseph Clifton Smith, now 54, was sentenced to dying for a decades-old homicide — a call that continues to be challenged in courtroom.

In 1997, Smith beat Durk Van Dam to dying with a hammer and a noticed in Mobile County to steal his boots, instruments and $140, Reuters reported. Van Dam’s physique was present in his truck in an remoted wooded space.

Lower federal courts discovered Smith is intellectually disabled and might’t be executed. People who’re intellectually disabled are protected against the dying penalty following a Supreme Court ruling from 2002.

But this fall, the Supreme Court will hear arguments about what to do in circumstances when IQ scores are barely above the broadly accepted 70-point marker to find out if somebody is intellectually disabled.

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When a federal appeals courtroom dominated in May 2023 that Smith couldn’t be executed because of his mental incapacity, it detailed how he struggled at school from an early age.

Since first grade, Smith struggled at school, and when he underwent an mental analysis he obtained an IQ rating of 75, CNN reported on the time, citing the appeals courtroom.

In fourth grade, Smith was positioned in a learning-disability class.

“After that placement, Smith developed an unpredictable temper and often fought with classmates. His behavior became so troublesome that his school placed him in an ‘emotionally conflicted classroom,”’ the appeals courtroom wrote in its ruling.

Smith dropped out of faculty after failing seventh and eighth grade after which spent “much of the next 15 years in prison” for crimes of housebreaking and receiving stolen property, in keeping with the ruling.

The appeals courtroom mentioned Smith confessed to killing Van Dam and that he “offered two conflicting versions of the crime.”

Smith first mentioned he watched Van Dam be killed, after which he mentioned he took half in his homicide however didn’t imply to kill him, in keeping with the appeals courtroom.

The Alabama Attorney General’s workplace decried the appeals courtroom’s ruling, saying on the time, in keeping with CNN, “Smith’s IQ scores have consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled. The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional.”

The Supreme Court will now think about making it more durable for convicted murderers to indicate their lives must be spared as a result of they’re intellectually disabled.