Supreme Court weighs role of IQ scores in debate over execution of disabled people

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: ABC News

December 10, 2025, 5:11 AM


More than 20 years ago, the Supreme Court outlawed the execution of intellectually disabled people convicted of capital crimes as "cruel and unusual" punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment.

In a major case from Alabama before the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the justices are asked to clarify who qualifies as "intellectually disabled" and what role intelligence quotient -- also known as IQ -- test scores play in making the determination.

Joseph Clifton Smith, an Alabama man who brought the case, confessed to a 1997 murder during a robbery, but challenged his death sentence on grounds he has had "substantially subaverage intellectual functioning" since a young age.

Smith has taken five separate IQ tests over nearly 40 years, scoring 75 in 1979, 74 in 1982, 72 in 1998, 78 in 2014 and 74 in 2017. People below 70 are generally considered to have an intellectual disability, but major American medical groups urge a holistic assessment that also looks at social and practical skills.

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-weighs-role-iq-scores-debate-execution/story?id=128146026

[Jerry2144]

1. They will split the hair to protect trump

But still allow executing others. We all know trump’s IQ is single digit. Or possibly imaginary

[LT Barclay]

2. I think they need to check some IQ's on the court first.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

3. Get rid of the death penalty, it's kinda stupid to kill someone who's gonna die anyway.

As a kid, I was told in church that all humans had been sentenced to death. If true, the State is just wasting money and effort to kill folks.

[PatSeg]

5. Excellent point

Plus we don't know what happens to people when they die, so are we punishing them or rewarding them? Add to that the possible psychological harm it does to those who perform executions.

To me, the death penalty is state sanctioned murder

[Ziggysmom]

6. How true! The Death Penalty Information Center notes that each death penalty case

costs from 1 to 3 million $$ per case. They also say since 1973, at least 200 people who were wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in the U.S. have been exonerated.
I also have never seen any statistics which showed the death penalty was any deterrent to violent crime.

[travelingthrulife]

4. Ahhh...those 'pro-life' people again.

[FakeNoose]

7. The standard IQ test has a lot of problems

One of the main problems is that the final "score" is determined by dividing the result by the person's age. The older the test-taker is, the lower the score just because he or she is older than the last time they took the test. Also there are language barriers that might indicate the person's educational level, or their facility with English, but not necessarily the person's intelligence or understanding.

"Just because I'm dumb it doesn't mean I'm stupid."

[Martin68]

8. A statistics and assessment course I took for my master's degree at UVA was taught by a professor who often provided

expert witness testimony in murder trials. He said that he was a concerned how many defendants had borderline IQs in the 70s but were deemed to be competent to stand trial.