By Andrés Chung

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a court decision that had spared the execution of a man convicted of murder in Alabama because he was found to have an intellectual disability.

The justices concluded that the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals should clarify its ruling that Joseph Clifton Smith’s death sentence for a 1997 murder should be overturned in light of the court’s decision. 2002 Supreme Court ruling that executing a person with an intellectual disability is cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Smith was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of a man named Durk Van Dam in Mobile County, Alabama. Smith fatally beat the man with a hammer and saw to steal his boots, some tools and $140, according to evidence in the case. The victim’s body was found in his mud-covered Ford Ranger truck in a secluded wooded area.

The 2002 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Atkins v. Virginia prohibited executing people with intellectual disabilities.

Like many states, conservative-leaning Alabama considers evidence of IQ test scores of 70 or less as part of the standard for determining intellectual disability. Supreme Court rulings in 2014 and 2017 allowed courts to consider IQ score ranges close to 70 along with other evidence of intellectual disability, as evidence of “adjustment deficits.”

Smith had five scores on IQ tests, the lowest of which was 72. A federal judge noted that Smith’s score could be as low as 69, given the standard error of plus or minus three points. The judge then determined that Smith had significant deficits from an early age in social and interpersonal skills, independent living, and academics.

The Eleventh Circuit upheld the judge’s findings in 2023, overturning Smith’s death sentence.

“Smith is not intellectually disabled,” Alabama told the Supreme Court in its appeal, holding that the 11th Circuit had “bent the law and logic” by focusing too much on Smith’s lower IQ score to determine that he had an intellectual disability.

The justices, in a brief, unsigned opinion Monday, said the 11th Circuit’s assessment of Smith’s IQ scores can be read two ways and requires clarification. The Supreme Court’s review of the state’s appeal in the case “may depend on the basis” of the 11th Circuit’s decision, according to the opinion.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch said they would have taken over and scheduled arguments in the Alabama appeal.

The Supreme Court spent an unusually long time considering whether to take up Alabama’s appeal, which was filed in August 2023.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)