The Supreme Court's 5-4 DIG in Hamm v. Smith bars Alabama from executing Joseph Smith but leaves Atkins v. Virginia exposed to future challenge.
The Supreme Court dismissed Alabama's petition in *Hamm v. Smith* as "improvidently granted" on May 21, leaving intact an Eleventh Circuit ruling that death-row inmate Joseph Clifton Smith is intellectually disabled and therefore cannot be executed under the Eighth Amendment [1]. The dismissal, known as a DIG, carries no precedential force but ends, for now, Alabama's effort to execute Smith [2]. The practical effect is that Smith's intellectual-disability finding stands [1].
The Court took *Hamm v. Smith* on petition from Alabama Commissioner of Corrections John Q. Hamm, who challenged the Eleventh Circuit's determination that Smith met the clinical threshold for intellectual disability under *Atkins v. Virginia*, the 2002 decision barring execution of intellectually disabled individuals [3]. After briefing and oral argument, a five-justice majority concluded the case should not have been accepted [1]. The coalition was notable: Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined the Court's three liberal justices to form the majority, crossing the Court's conventional ideological line [2].
The fractures within the conservative bloc sharpened the ruling's significance. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote separately to argue that *Atkins* itself should be overruled, a position he advanced without joining the principal dissent [1]. Justice Samuel Alito authored a four-justice dissent, joined by Justices Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Chief Justice John Roberts in relevant part, warning that the Court "should not be surprised" if it is asked to overturn *Atkins* in a future case [2]. Alito's dissent signals that at least four justices view the current *Atkins* framework, including how courts assess intellectual-disability claims, as unsettled and revisable [1]. The combined Thomas concurrence and Alito dissent represent a sustained attack on *Atkins* from within the Court's right wing, even as two of its members declined to join the assault [2].
The DIG leaves open the doctrinal questions Alabama raised: what evidentiary standards states must apply when adjudicating intellectual-disability claims in capital cases, and how much deference courts owe state-court findings under federal habeas review [3]. Those questions are unresolved across several circuits, and the dissents function as an explicit invitation for a future petitioner to present a cleaner vehicle [1]. Practitioners in capital litigation will watch for a case that squarely presents the *Atkins* standard to a Court that, based on the dissents, may be prepared to reexamine it [2].