Overview
- Oral arguments in Hamm v. Smith are set for Wednesday, Dec. 10, focusing on whether a single test score can rule out intellectual disability in capital cases.
- The court has framed the question as whether and how judges may consider the cumulative effect of multiple IQ scores when evaluating eligibility for Eighth Amendment protections.
- Alabama argues that higher results, including Smith’s score of 78 with a confidence interval above 70, foreclose an intellectual-disability finding, and the Trump administration filed a brief supporting that approach.
- Smith cites five scores ranging from 72 to 78 and prevailed in district court and again at the 11th Circuit, which upheld relief based on the full record, including adaptive functioning deficits and onset before age 18.
- Professional associations urge a clinically grounded, holistic assessment consistent with Atkins, Hall, and Moore, rejecting any rule that makes a single IQ number dispositive.