US Court Overturns Intellectual Disability Finding for Death Row Prisoner
The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a lower court’s ruling that had shielded Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted murderer from Alabama, from execution due to an assertion of intellectual disability.
The justices determined that the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals needs to provide further clarification on its previous decision, which deemed Smith's death penalty unjustifiable following a pivotal 2002 Supreme Court ruling. This earlier decision established that executing individuals who are intellectually…