The Supreme Court dismissed Hamm v. Smith as improvidently granted, leaving federal courts without guidance on how to weigh cumulative IQ scores in Atkins capital cases.
The Supreme Court dismissed *Hamm v. Smith* as improvidently granted on May 21, 2026, vacating its earlier decision to hear the case and leaving in place a lower-court ruling that Alabama death row inmate Joseph Clifton Smith is intellectually disabled under *Atkins v. Virginia* [1]. The dismissal, known as a DIG, resolves nothing on the merits and returns the case to the posture it held before the Court's grant of certiorari [2].
The Court had accepted the case to address a contested question in capital habeas litigation: how federal courts should weigh cumulative IQ scores when evaluating intellectual disability claims under *Atkins* [1]. Smith's case arose out of Alabama, where state courts had rejected his disability claim, and the lower federal courts ultimately ruled in his favor [1]. The Alabama Department of Corrections, as the respondent, had pressed the Court to impose a more structured framework for IQ-score analysis in Atkins proceedings [1].
The per curiam DIG drew concurrences from Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who indicated the dismissal was appropriate given the posture of the record [2]. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Alito, joined by Thomas, wrote that the Court was retreating from its obligation to supply workable rules for capital cases, a criticism aimed at the majority's refusal to resolve the underlying circuit-level disagreement on IQ methodology [1].
The practical consequence is significant. Federal courts evaluating Atkins claims now continue to operate without authoritative Supreme Court guidance on how to aggregate or weigh multiple IQ test scores over a defendant's lifetime [1]. That methodological gap creates inconsistent outcomes across jurisdictions, with some courts applying strict IQ cutoffs and others treating multiple scores as a data set requiring holistic analysis [1]. Capital defendants in states with more rigid standards remain exposed to disparate treatment relative to those in jurisdictions that apply broader evidentiary frameworks [2].
The DIG does not foreclose a future vehicle. The Court may relist a cleaner case presenting the same IQ-methodology question with a more fully developed record [2]. Until then, Smith's intellectual disability finding stands, and the circuit split that prompted the certiorari grant remains unresolved [1].