WASHINGTON — A divided Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed Alabama’s bid to be allowed to execute a convicted murder who was found by lower courts to be intellectually disabled.
The court’s action leaves in place lower court rulings in favor of Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, who has been on death row roughly half his life after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.
The Supreme Court prohibited execution of intellectually disabled people in a landmark ruling in 2002. The justices, in cases in 2014 and 2017, held that states should consider other evidence of disability in borderline cases because
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