A Rare Win at the Supreme Court for a Death-Row Prisoner
Despite his jurisprudential claims, it is hard to avoid the sense that Thomas’s personal views carry the day here. He describes Smith’s crimes in detail, as if it were relevant to the legal analysis. Unlike his colleagues, who all use the term “intellectual disability,” Thomas uses “mental retardation” when describing the conditions at issue here, echoing a broader public embrace of the slur by the American far right. He argues that the rule laid out by Blackstone and other English legal luminaries only applies to a “common-law idiot” and not, in Thomas’s view, to Smith.
Thomas’s colleagues would not go nearly that far—at least, not for now. Alito suggested that he might be inclined to do so if the court does not “clarify” its existing precedents. “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,” he wrote, referring to the intellectual-disability cases.
That zeal for ensuring that executions go forward, unhindered by lower courts or defense attorneys, is characteristic of the Roberts court’s recent approach to the death penalty. In recent years, the Supreme Court has become generally hostile to death penalty litigation from prisoners and defendants, to the point that lawyers supporting its abolition or reduction now often shy away from bringing challenges that could be perceived as undermining American capital punishment. Thursday’s ruling suggests that there is still an outer boundary to the court’s eagerness for executions, no matter how hazy and indistinct it might be at this distance.