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Samuel Alito warns Supreme Court “exacerbates the confusion”.Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito warned that the court exacerbated confusion about the use of how courts should determine IQ in death penalty cases in a new ruling on Thursday.Alito dissented from the Supreme Court majority that ruled to dismiss the case Hamm v.Smith on Thursday.A majority of justices decided the case should not be used to set rules to evaluate multiple IQ scores in death penalty cases.The case has implications for those cases involving individuals who may have intellectual disabilities.By dismissing the case without resolving the dispute over multiple IQ scores, the majority leaves lower courts without new guidance on the issue.Newsweek reached out to attorneys representing Smith and the Alabama attorney general's office via email for comment.Supreme Court's Ruling in Hamm v.Smith: What to Know The case centers around Joseph Smith, who was sentenced to death in Alabama, who argued he is intellectually disabled and cannot be executed under Atkins v.Virginia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that sentencing a person with mental disabilities is a violation of the Eighth Amendment.Smith has been on death row after his conviction for beating a man to death in 1997.He cited IQ scores over the years ranging from 72 to 78, with standard error ranges that could place him below 70.Lower courts ultimately determined that Smith is intellectually disabled.Alabama asked the Supreme Court to intervene and determine how courts should approach cases involving multiple IQ scores.The case specifically deals with individuals who are found to have an IQ slightly above 70, which has been widely accepted as a marker of intellectual disability.His lawyers have argued he was placed in learning-disabled classes and dropped out of school after seventh grade.At the time of the crime, he performed math at a kindergarten level, spelled at a third-grade level and read at a fourth-grade level.Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the court’s dismissal that it is “not equipped in this case to provide any meaningful guidance on how courts should assess multiple IQ scores.” The Supreme Court majority decided the case was improvidently granted.The three liberal justices, along with conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, formed the majority to dismiss the case.“Although the parties offer to this Court a variety of approaches to assessing multiple IQ scores that States could adopt, the litigation below did not focus on whether a precise methodology exists that courts must use.Without the benefit of an evidentiary record or decisions below trained on the specific theories now advanced by the parties, this Court rightly concludes that it should not provide more detailed guidance beyond what this Court’s cases have previously said,” she wrote.Sotomayor wrote that both parties agree there is no single required method for evaluating multiple IQ scores, and that the issue wasn’t litigated in the lower courts; therefore, there is no way for the Supreme Court to address it."Although the parties offer to this Court a variety of approaches to assessing multiple IQ scores that States could adopt, the litigation below did not focus on whether a precise methodology exists that courts must use.Without the benefit of an evidentiary record or decisions below trained on the specific theories now advanced by the parties, this Court rightly concludes that it should not provide more detailed guidance beyond what this Court’s cases have previously said," she wrote.Alabama prosecutors have rejected the notion that Smith is intellectually disabled.“Joseph Smith is not intellectually disabled.Five independent IQ tests placed him well above the legal threshold, and no amount of judicial creativity can change that,” Attorney General Steve Marshall said in December 2025.He said his office provided a “rigorous defense of the State’s authority to enforce capital sentences without being undermined by shifting and unscientific standards—standards that have nothing to do with the Constitution.” Alito, Thomas Write Dissenting Opinions Alito and his fellow conservative justice, Clarence Thomas, wrote dissenting opinions in the case, arguing that the court should have used it to offer such guidance.The court “should have used this case to bring clarity to our Atkins doctrine,” Alito wrote.“By instead remaining silent, the Court exacerbates the confusion that plagues our jurisprudence in this area,” he wrote.“If this Court continues to shy away from opportunities to provide workable doctrine, we should not be surprised if petitions asking us to overrule Atkins, Hall, and Moore arrive at our doorsteps soon.” Alito wrote that the case addressed one of the “unresolved” questions in the Atkins case around how a court “should a court apply a 70-IQ cutoff when a defendant has multiple test scores in the record?” He wrote that the failure of the Supreme Court to address the question has “led to confusion and unsound analysis in lower courts." Thomas was more critical of the ruling in Atkins, writing that the court at the time “set aside the Constitution and imposed a new rule anyway.” “As this case shows, though, Atkins has bred only confusion and absurdity.Nothing in the text or history of the Constitution supports Atkins.It should be overruled,” he wrote.Supreme Court Ruling Was 'Correct,' Legal Expert Tells Newsweek Eric Freedman, a Hofstra University professor of law whose focus includes the death penalty, told Newsweek on Thursday that the court’s decision to “dismiss the case as improvidently granted was correct.” “The State was trying an aggressive ploy that rightly failed,” he said.“As Justice Sotomayor correctly documents, there is no widespread confusion in the lower courts, so review never should have been granted in the first place.” While experts do disagree about symptom patterns, sorting out those disputes is “the normal work of the lower courts,” he said.Thomas is likely the only justice who wants to overturn Atkins, Freedman said.“He has no other votes,” he said.This article includes reporting by the Associated Press.