Date: 05-19-2023

Case Style:

Joseph Clifton Smith v. Commissioner Alabama Department of Corrections

Case Number: 21-14519

Judge: Per Curiam

Court: United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on appeal from the Southern District of Alabama

Plaintiff's Attorney: Federal Public Defender's Office

Defendant's Attorney: Alabama Attorney General's Office

Description: Mobile, Alabama federal public defender's claimed that Defendant's Eighth Amendment Rights were violated.

Durk Van Dam was brutally murdered on November 23,
1997. Smith v. Campbell (“Smith III”), 620 F. App’x 734, 736 (11th Cir.
2015). Police found Van Dam’s body in an isolated area near his
pick-up truck in Mobile County. Id. On the same day that police
discovered Van Dam’s body, they interviewed Petitioner Joseph
Clifton Smith. Id.

Although Smith confessed to Van Dam’s murder, he offered
two conflicting versions of the crime. Id. At first, he said that he
watched Van Dam’s murder. Id. Then, he said that he participated,
but that he didn’t intend to kill Van Dam. Id.

A grand jury in Mobile County eventually indicted Smith for
capital murder. Id. The case went to trial, and the jury found Smith
guilty. Id. at 736–37.

B. During the sentencing phase of Smith’s trial, the parties presented evidence of Smith’s intellectual abilities.

During the sentencing phase, the parties presented evidence
concerning aggravating and mitigating factors. One mitigating factor was whether Smith committed the crime while he “was under
the influence of extreme mental or emotional disturbance.” Ala.
Code § 13A-5-51(2). Both sides presented evidence of Smith’s childhood, family background, and intellectual abilities to contest
whether that mitigating factor applied to Smith.

Smith’s mother and sister testified that his father was an abusive alcoholic. Smith III, 620 F. App’x at 738–39. Smith’s father beat
the children with belts and water hoses. Id. Smith’s mother and
father divorced when Smith was nine or ten years old. Id. at 738.

Soon after his parents divorced, Smith’s mother remarried
to a man named Hollis Luker. Like Smith’s father, Luker beat the
children and was drunk “just about every day.” Id. at 739. Smith’s
neighbor testified that his mother would bring Smith and his siblings to the neighbor’s home to escape Luker’s beatings. Id.

In the meantime, Smith struggled in school. He had been
described as a “slow learner” since he was in the first grade. Smith
was eight years old when he reached third grade. At that point, he
still needed help to function at a first-grade level, prompting his
teacher to label him an underachiever and refer him for an “intellectual evaluation.”
During that evaluation, Smith obtained a full-scale IQ score
of 75. That score meant that Smith was “functioning in the
Borderline range of measured intelligence.” Smith’s school then
asked his mother for permission to do more testing.

At the beginning of Smith’s fourth-grade year, which coincided with his parents’ divorce, his mother agreed to have the
school perform additional testing. After undergoing more testing,
Smith was placed in a learning-disability class.

After that placement, Smith developed an unpredictable
temper and often fought with classmates. His behavior became so
troublesome that his school placed him in an “emotionally conflicted classroom.” These types of classrooms hosted special-education classes for students who could not adjust to a regular classroom, according to Dr. James Chudy, a clinical psychologist. Dr.
Chudy met with Smith three times after Van Dam’s murder, administered several tests, analyzed records from Smith’s past, authored a report about his findings, and testified during Smith’s sentencing phase. Id. at 738–39.
Smith’s academic deficits persisted through junior high
school. When he entered sixth grade, his school reevaluated his
intellectual abilities. This time, he obtained a full-scale IQ score of
74, again placing him “in the Borderline range of measured intelligence.” By grade seven, the school determined that Smith was eligible for the “Educable [Intellectually Disabled]” program. He
went on to fail the seventh and eighth grades before dropping out
of school for good. Id. at 740.

Smith spent much of the next fifteen years in prison. When
he was nineteen, Smith went to prison for burglary and receiving
stolen property. He was released from prison after six years. But
he returned a year later when he violated the conditions of his parole. There he remained until his release in November 1997, just
two days before Van Dam’s murder.

Dr. Chudy reevaluated Smith just after Van Dam’s murder.
When Dr. Chudy tested Smith’s IQ, Smith obtained a full-scale
score of 72. During the sentencing phase, Dr. Chudy testified that
Smith’s true IQ score could be as high as 75 or as low as 69 after
accounting for the standard error of measurement inherent in IQ
tests. “69 is considered clearly [intellectually disabled],”1 he explained. Either way, Smith’s raw score of 72 suggests that he functions at a lower level than 97% of the general population. Dr.
Chudy also described Smith as “barely literate in reading.”
The sentencing phase eventually came to an end, and the Alabama trial court found that the aggravating circumstances outweighed the mitigating ones. The court thus sentenced Smith to
death.

C. Smith petitioned for habeas relief and argued, among other
things, that his sentence violates the Eighth and Fourteenth
Amendments because he is intellectually disabled.

After exhausting his direct appeals, Smith sought habeas relief in state court. He argued, among other things, that his
1 We alter quotations that use outdated language to describe intellectual disabilities. E.g., Brumfield v. Cain, 576 U.S. 305, 308 n.1 (2015); Kilgore v. Sec’y, Fla.
Dep’t of Corr., 805 F.3d 1301, 1303 n.1 (11th Cir. 2015).

sentence violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments because
he is intellectually disabled. See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304
(2002).

Consistent with the medical community’s general consensus, Alabama law defines intellectual disability as including three
criteria: (1) significantly subaverage intellectual functioning (i.e.,
an IQ of 70 or below); (2) significant or substantial deficits in adaptive behavior; and (3) the onset of those qualities during the developmental period (i.e., before the age of 18). Ex parte Perkins, 851
So. 2d 453, 456 (Ala. 2002).

Applying that definition, the Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals ultimately rejected Smith’s Atkins claim, finding that he
could not meet the intellectual-disability criteria based on the evidence adduced during his trial and sentencing phase. See Smith v.
State (“Smith I”), 71 So. 3d 12, 19–21 (Ala. Crim. App. 2008) (“[T]he
record in Smith’s direct appeal supports the circuit court’s conclusion that Smith does not meet the broadest definition of [intellectually disabled] adopted by the Alabama Supreme Court in Ex parte
Perkins, 851 So. 2d 453 (Ala. 2002).”), cert denied, No. 1080589 (Ala.
2010) (mem.).

Smith then invoked 28 U.S.C. § 2254 and pressed his Atkins
claim in federal court. The district court rejected Smith’s Atkins
claim without holding an evidentiary hearing, concluding that the
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals did not unreasonably apply
federal law. Smith v. Thomas (“Smith II”), No. 05-0474-CG-M, 2013
WL 5446032, at *29 (S.D. Ala. 2013). In doing so, the district court
relied on Smith’s failure “to prove that his intellectual functioning
was or is significantly subaverage,” id. at *29 n.1, which is the first
prong for Alabama’s intellectual-disability definition and requires
an IQ of 70 or below. Ex parte Perkins, 851 So. 2d at 456. The district
court therefore treated “an IQ of 70 as the ceiling for significantly
subaverage intellectual functioning” and held that Smith’s full-scale
IQ scores of 75, 74, and 72 were “fatal to Smith’s Atkins claim.”
Smith II, 2013 WL 5446032, at *28–29.

Smith then appealed, and we reversed. Smith III, 620 F.
App’x at 749–52. We first explained that Alabama law does not employ “a strict IQ cut-off of 70” to define significantly subaverage intellectual functioning. Id. at 749. And that was key because Dr.
Chudy’s testimony during the sentencing phase “showed that
Smith’s IQ could be as low as 69 given a standard error of measurement of plus-or-minus three points.” Id. at 749–50 (citation omitted). We also noted that “other trial evidence” suggested that
Smith had “deficits in intellectual functioning,” id. at 750. Based on
that evidence and “the fact that Alabama does not employ a strict
IQ cut-off score of 70,” we held that the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals “determination that Smith conclusively did not possess
significantly subaverage intellectual functioning was an unreasonable determination of the facts.” Id. (citation omitted).

We then turned to the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals’s
finding “that Smith did not suffer from significant or substantial
deficits in adaptive behavior.” Id. This, too, was an unreasonable
determination of the facts, we said, because the record contained
evidence “that would support a fact finding that Smith had significant limitations in at least” two areas of adaptive functioning: “(1)
social/interpersonal skills and self-direction.” Id. We therefore
said that “the record affirmatively contradicts” the Alabama Criminal court of Appeals’s finding that Smith did not suffer from significant defects in adaptive behavior. Id. at 750–51.

For those reasons, we remanded Smith’s Atkins claim to the
district court. Id. at 751. We instructed the district court “to allow
Smith . . . to present an expert witness on his behalf.” Id. at 750–
51. And we also instructed the district court to consider “Smith’s
requests for discovery and an evidentiary hearing.” Id. at 752.

D. The district court held an evidentiary hearing to determine
whether Smith is intellectually disabled.

On remand, the district court held an evidentiary hearing to
assess whether Smith is intellectually disabled. The district court
heard lay and expert testimony and received reports from experts
who evaluated Smith and analyzed his records.

Outcome: Affirmed

Plaintiff's Experts:

Defendant's Experts:

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