Supreme Court averts inmate's execution in intellectual disability case

WASHINGTON - A man convicted of a 1997 murder in Alabama will be spared execution after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday kept in place a judicial finding that the inmate is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.

The justices dismissed an appeal by Alabama officials of a lower court’s approach to determining Joseph Clifton Smith’s intellectual capacity. That method involved weighing multiple intelligence quotient, or IQ, test scores alongside expert testimony.

Under a 2002 Supreme Court precedent in a case called Atkins v. Virginia, executing an intellectually disabled person violates the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. 

At issue in Smith’s case was whether and how courts may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores in assessing a death-row inmate’s intellectual disability.

Kacey Keeton, a lawyer for Smith, said he will be resentenced by state courts and moved from death row. 

“Joseph Smith has spent decades on death row while courts examined whether the Constitution protects him. Today, it does,” Keeton said, adding that the court’s decision had brought her client and his family “profound relief.”

“The District Court listened carefully to experts on all sides and concluded that Mr. Smith is intellectually disabled,” Keeton added. “The Supreme Court declined to disturb that finding, and Mr. Smith will not be executed.”

Republican President Donald Trump’s administration had backed Alabama in the case.

Smith, now 55, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1997 murder of a man named Durk Van Dam in Alabama’s Mobile County. Smith fatally beat the man with a hammer and saw in order to steal his boots, tools and $140, according to evidence in the case. The victim’s body was found in his mud-bound Ford Ranger truck in an isolated, wooded area.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the dispute in December, but said on Thursday that it should not have taken up Alabama’s appeal.

Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson concurred in the decision to dismiss the case. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Chief Justice John Roberts and fellow conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch joined Alito’s dissent in part.

“Nothing in our case law sanctioned the lower courts’ analyses, and we should have used this case to bring clarity to our Atkins doctrine,” Alito wrote.

“By instead remaining silent,” Alito wrote, “the court exacerbates the confusion that plagues our jurisprudence in this area.” 

Like many states, Alabama considers evidence of IQ test scores of 70 or below as part of the standard for determining intellectual disability. Supreme Court rulings in 2014 and 2017 allowed courts to consider IQ score ranges that are close to 70, along with other evidence of intellectual disability, such as testimony of “adaptive deficits.”

Smith had five IQ test scores, ranging from a high of 78 to a low of 72. A federal judge noted that Smith’s lowest score could in fact be as low as 69, given the standard error of measurement of roughly plus or minus three IQ points. The judge then found that Smith had significant deficits from an early age in social and interpersonal skills, independent living and academics.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s conclusions in 2023, setting aside Smith’s death sentence. This prompted Alabama officials to file the first of two appeals to the Supreme Court in the case.

The Supreme Court in 2024 threw out the 11th Circuit’s decision, saying that the lower court’s evaluation of Smith’s IQ scores could be read two ways and required clarification.

The 11th Circuit responded with an opinion clarifying that its evaluation was based on “a holistic approach to multiple IQ scores” that also considered additional relevant evidence, including expert testimony. This prompted the second appeal by Alabama officials to the Supreme Court.

Court deals setback to cruise operators over Cuba confiscations

The court delivered a setback on Thursday to four American cruise operators that contested $440 million in combined judgments after being accused of unlawfully using docks in Cuba that were seized in 1959 by former leader Fidel Castro’s communist government.

The justices, in an 8-1 ruling, set aside a lower court’s decision to throw out the judgments against Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Royal Caribbean Cruises and MSC Cruises. The cruise operators were sued by a U.S. company called Havana Docks Corporation that had built the port facilities before the Cuban revolution.

Havana Docks filed suit under the Helms-Burton Act, a 1996 law that allows U.S. nationals who owned property in Cuba to sue anyone who “traffics in property which was confiscated by the Cuban government on or after January 1, 1959.”

Thursday’s ruling was issued at a particularly sensitive time in U.S.-Cuban relations. The United States on Wednesday announced murder charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, Fidel’s younger brother, in a major escalation in President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Cuba’s communist government.

Under Trump, the United States has effectively imposed a blockade on Cuba by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and exacerbating its worst crisis in decades.

Havana Docks built docks in Havana’s port during the early 20th century, and has sought compensation from the cruise lines because their ships have used the seized terminal. The company had a 99-year concession from Cuba’s government for the construction and operation of piers at the port of Havana.

Shortly after coming to power, Castro nationalized and expropriated property held by U.S. companies, including Havana Docks. Cuba has never paid any compensation to Havana Docks.

While the Helms-Burton Act primarily authorized lawsuits against Cuba’s government and its state-owned enterprises, it also created potential liability for international businesses like the U.S. cruise lines that have done business in Cuba.

U.S. presidents of both parties opted to suspend a key provision of the Helms-Burton Act, meaning private lawsuits could not go forward. But Trump lifted that suspension in 2019 during his first term in office, unleashing a wave of litigation in U.S. courts against Cuban state-owned entities and a few American companies that were accused of trafficking in confiscated property.

The four cruise operators used the docks from 2016 to 2019, after President Barack Obama had eased travel restrictions on Cuba. In a joint court filing, the companies said it defies common sense that they “should pay hundreds of millions of dollars for following the executive branch’s lead in reopening travel to Cuba.”

A U.S. judge in 2022 ruled that the cruise lines had engaged in trafficking by having their ships dock at the terminal and imposed judgments of more than $100 million against each of the four.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out those judgments last year, focusing on the fact that the Havana Docks concession would have expired in 2004, well before the cruise lines used the facilities.

“When that concession expired in 2004, any property interest that Havana Docks had by virtue of that concession ended,” the 11th Circuit wrote. Thus, the conduct of the cruise lines from 2016 to 2019 did not constitute trafficking in the confiscated property of Havana Docks, it added.

Writing for the Supreme Court, Thomas said the 11th Circuit’s decision was in conflict with the plain text of the Helms-Burton Act.

In a dissent, liberal Justice Elena Kagan wrote that it was her colleagues who had misconstrued the statute’s text.

Kagan wrote that “what Havana Docks owned was only a property interest allowing it to use those docks for a specified time,” and that Thursday’s decision will “allow plaintiffs to recover for trafficking in property that was not theirs.”

Havana Docks and the cruise lines either did not immediately respond to requests for comment or declined to comment.

The 11th Circuit’s decision was one of several from U.S. courts that have created barriers for Helms-Burton Act claimants. Most of these cases have been dismissed on jurisdictional or procedural grounds.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in February. On the same day, the justices also heard arguments in another case involving Helms-Burton Act litigation - ExxonMobil’s lawsuit seeking compensation from the Cuban state-owned firm Corporación CIMEX in light of Castro’s confiscation of all of the U.S. energy company’s oil and gas assets in Cuba in 1959.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the Exxon case by the end of next month.

Copyright Reuters or USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.

This story was originally published May 21, 2026 at 1:06 PM.