Hamm v. Smith · ¶68

In 1997, Joseph Clifton Smith murdered Durk Van Dam. The trial court, accepting the jury's recommendation, sentenced Smith to death. Smith lost his appeal in 2001. But a year later, in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304 (2002), this Court held for the first time that convicted murderers like Smith cannot be executed if they are deemed insuffciently intelligent, which the Court suggested would require that they had an IQ of 70 or below. Id., at 308–309, and n. 3, 316–321. Such persons could not be executed, the Court said, even if they “know the difference between right and wrong,” even if they “are competent to stand trial,” and even if they are intelligent enough to deserve other “criminal sanctions.” Id., at 318. The Court did not pretend that the Constitution had ever been understood to impose such a rule. Id., at 340–341 (Scalia, J., dissenting). Just 13 years earlier, it had…

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