A federal appeals court has ruled the state of Alabama cannot execute death row inmate Joseph Clifton Smith, a man with an IQ in the 70s, who was sentenced to death for a 1997 murder.
The U.S. Eleventh Court of Appeals’ decision on Friday upheld a lower court’s ruling that 53-year-old Smith is intellectually disabled and therefore his death sentence violates the Eighth Amendment. It also means he cannot be executed unless the decision is reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Amanda Priest, spokeswoman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, said the state plans to appeal the ruling.
“Joseph Smith brutally murdered Durk Van Dam in 1997, and for that, he was sentenced to death,” Priest said. “The Attorney General thinks his death sentence was both just and constitutional.”
Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal 1997 beating of Durk Van Dam.
Van Dam, whose body was found in an isolated area near his pickup truck in Mobile County, died as a result of 35 blunt-force injuries to his body, according to testimony from a forensic pathologist.
In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. Alabama law defines intellectual disability as an IQ of 70 or below, “significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior” and the onset of those issues before the age of 18.
Friday’s ruling concluded that “Smith’s intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life,” as U.S. District Judge Callie V. S. Granade previously wrote in 2021.
However, the state argues that Smith’s various IQ scores, all between 72 and 78, have “consistently placed his IQ above that of someone who is intellectually disabled.”