SCOTUS hears case if Alabama can execute intellectually disabled man

By MARK SHERMAN and KIM CHANDLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled over how courts should decide borderline cases of whether convicted murderers are intellectually disabled and should be shielded from execution.

There was no clear outcome apparent after the justices heard two hours of arguments in an appeal from Alabama, which wants to put to death a man who lower federal courts found is intellectually disabled.

Joseph Clifton Smith, 55, 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 case