The case involves Joseph Clifton Smith, an Alabama death-row inmate convicted of murdering Durk Van Dam nearly 30 years ago. Smith has received five IQ scores — 75, 74, 72, 78, and 74 — all above 70, the threshold Alabama uses to define intellectual disability. Lower federal courts nonetheless found that Smith satisfied the first prong of the intellectual-disability test, a ruling Alabama now asks the Supreme Court to reverse.
Robert M. Overing, Principal Deputy Solicitor General of Alabama, arguing for Commissioner John Q. Hamm, urged the Court to hold that states may require defendants to prove their true IQ is likely 70 or below using a reasonably reliable method for aggregating multiple scores — such as the median, an overlap of error ranges, a composite score, or the highest score when its entire error range exceeds 70. Overing argued that the lower courts erred by focusing on the single lowest score as creating a possibility of intellectual disability, rather than demanding that Smith demonstrate a likelihood his IQ falls below 70 when all scores are considered together.
Harry Graver, Assistant to the Solicitor General, arguing for the United States as amicus supporting Alabama, identified two discrete errors below: first, that the courts applied a possibility standard rather than a preponderance standard; and second, that once the courts found the IQ scores theoretically consistent with a sub-70 IQ, they dropped the scores from the analysis entirely rather than returning to weigh them against the secondary evidence. Graver and Overing parted ways on one key point — Overing argued that if a state's chosen method shows scores above 70, that should be dispositive; Graver was more cautious, suggesting IQ evidence could be practically but not necessarily legally dispositive.
Seth P. Waxman, arguing for Smith, countered that Alabama law — like the law of nearly every other state, with the limited exception of Oklahoma — requires courts to evaluate all probative evidence of intellectual functioning, not just raw IQ scores. He told the Court he was holding all 12 decided, reported post-Hall cases in Alabama, and argued that not one confined its analysis to test scores alone. Waxman also read to the Court from the court of appeals' opinion on remand, which he said quoted from Hall and stated that the additional evidence of Smith's adaptive deficiencies plausibly supports the district court's reading that although Smith scored above 70 in IQ tests, his actual functioning is comparable to that of individuals with a lower score.
Several justices pressed Alabama hard on whether its proposed rules had any grounding in existing state law or prior litigation. Justice Sotomayor repeatedly challenged Overing to identify a single Alabama case applying the aggregation or composite-score methodology he was advocating, and noted that Alabama's own expert below had looked at all scores and then relied on adaptive functioning evidence — the very approach Alabama now calls error. Justice Jackson raised the party-presentation problem directly, noting that a few weeks earlier the Court had summarily reversed a habeas grant in a case called Clark versus Sweeney because the court of appeals had relied on an argument the petitioner had not presented, and questioning whether Alabama had ever asked the district court to apply the cumulative-effect framework it now champions.
Justice Kagan, through extended questioning of both Overing and Graver, pressed toward a reading of Hall and Moore under which a defendant who has at least one score whose standard error of measurement range reaches 70 or below must be given the opportunity to present adaptive functioning evidence, but the court may then weigh that evidence against the full body of IQ scores and find it insufficient. Justice Gorsuch proposed a two-part summary — that Hall bars treating a single score in the low 70s as decisive, and Moore bars using facts extraneous to IQ to outweigh a low score — and both Graver and Waxman largely agreed with that framing, though they differed on its application to Smith's facts.
The case is Hamm v. Smith, No. 24-872. Argument was heard December 10, 2025. No decision has issued.