(WASHINGTON) — In a rare move on Thursday, the Supreme Court spared the life of an “intellectually disabled” death row inmate, dismissing an appeal by Alabama officials who claimed the man’s multiple IQ scores show he is competent and eligible for execution.

The justices were narrowly divided, 5-4, in allowing a lower court ruling to stand that determined death for Joseph Clifton Smith, a convicted first-degree murderer, would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual” punishment.

The high court did not formally explain its decision.

More than 20 years ago, the high court outlawed the execution of intellectually disabled people convicted of capital crimes.

The heart of the Smith case involved a dispute over who qualifies as intellectually disabled and how to analyze conflicting intelligence quotient – also known as IQ – test scores in making the determination.

The decision on Thursday left that question unanswered.

“The court is not equipped in this case to provide any meaningful guidance on how courts should assess multiple IQ scores,” wrote Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a concurring opinion joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

While state officials had asked the court to set out a clear standard, Sotomayor suggested a case-by-case approach, considering legal precedent and “the views of medical experts,” should continue.

“If a conflict among the states or lower courts emerges and a case properly presents the issue, it may be appropriate for this court to weigh in with more specific guidance,” she wrote. “The court rightly decides it is inappropriate to do so in this case.”

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts dissented.

“The court shies away from its obligation to provide workable rules for capital cases,” Justice Alito wrote in a dissent joined by Thomas, Gorsuch and Roberts. “In doing so, the court disserves its own death-penalty jurisprudence, states’ criminal justice systems, lower courts, and victims of horrific murders.”

Justice Thomas wrote separately to call for a reinstatement of the death penalty for intellectually disabled people.

Smith, who will now spend life behind bars, confessed to a 1997 murder during a robbery, but challenged his death sentence on ground he has had “substantially subaverage intellectual functioning” since a young age.

He has taken five separate IQ tests over nearly 40 years, scoring 75 in 1979, 74 in 1982, 72 in 1998, 78 in 2014, and 74 in 2017.

People below 70 are generally considered to have an intellectual disability, but major American medical groups urge a holistic assessment that also looks at social and practical skills.

The groups note that standardized test scores alone should not be conclusive. Smith’s score of 72, for example, could be 69 when factoring the 3-point margin of error.

Smith, who alleges he suffered physical and verbal abuse as a child, consistently functioned at two grade-levels below his placement in school, according to court documents. Smith’s school classified him as “Educable Mentally Retarded” in 7th grade before he eventually dropped out.

Two lower federal courts ruled that a holistic analysis of Smith’s IQ scores and other evidence, including his behavioral history and school records, proved he is intellectually disabled.

“Joseph Smith is not intellectually disabled, and the Eighth Amendment does not override the death sentence he earned for murdering Durk Van Dam,” Alabama argued in its brief to the court. “Whether and how to weigh multiple IQ scores is left to state discretion.”

The state argued intellectual disability can only be proven by an IQ score of 70 or less by a preponderance of the evidence.

By one estimate, as many as 20% of the 2,100 people on death row in the U.S. may have some degree of intellectual disability, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

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(WASHINGTON) — A group of mostly Democratic strategists and power players are rebuilding a political action committee meant to fortify election-defense infrastructure ahead of 2028 by focusing on often overlooked state offices that control election administration, litigation and certification.

The group, Democracy Defenders, which previously worked to support legal efforts and help with post-election planning in partnership with the Harris presidential campaign, tells ABC News exclusively that they’re re-launching their political arm. It plans to spend upwards of $10 to 15 million by “protecting democracy and rule of law” in races for Attorneys General, Secretaries of State and state Supreme Court in presidential battleground states– places they see critical to safeguarding against escalating threats from Trump and his allies to subvert the 2028 election.

“The goal right now is to sabotage-proof the electoral system for 2028,” former Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair and Democracy Defenders operative Ben Wikler told ABC News.

In the aftermath of his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Trump and his administration have made moves since the start of his second term to retool future elections.

They seized boxes of 2020 election records from a Fulton County, Georgia, election site in January and Tump called Virginia’s special election on a new congressional map last month “rigged” without evidence.

They’ve also called for Republicans to “nationalize” and “take over” elections.

Focusing on down-ballot races

The down-ballot races the PAC will focus on could determine certification disputes, election litigation, voting rules and redistricting at a time when many voting-related laws are being actively challenged in the courts, Norm Eisen, a top Democratic attorney who was a co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, told ABC News in an interview. Eisen is pro-bono, outside counsel for the group.

“If it once again, as it did in 2020, comes down to the integrity of a handful of AGs and secretaries standing up for the genuine results, you must have pro-democracy leaders as AGs and secretary of state,” Eisen said.

Jim Messina, who was campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign who will now chair the advisory board, told ABC that state office races targeted by the PAC are often “way underfunded,” even though they handle “the block and tackling” of running elections.

Also on the board is former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock, former Secretary of Labor Tom Perez and Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.

The day-to-day operations will be overseen by TJ Ducklo, who worked for Joe Biden in 2020 and 2024, along with Wikler and former Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes.

Ramping up fundraising

Democracy Defenders is ramping up its fundraising efforts, too, with planned events with former President Joe Biden and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ 2024 running mate.

Their work is starting in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina, according to the group, and likely expand to other states. They’re also focused on some off-year elections in 2027, including another Wisconsin Supreme Court race. They put “several hundred thousand dollars” into the Georgia Supreme Court race on Tuesday, though those candidates were unsuccessful, PAC organizers said.

Last year, Elon Musk dumped $20 million into the high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race through his own PAC. Democracy Defenders is attempting similar work on a smaller scale. Ahead of the Georgia Supreme Court race on Tuesday, the group placed money behind former state Sen. Jen Jordan and attorney Miracle Rankin. Both lost their races, though Rankin came within 2 percentage points of beating the incumbent, according an Associated Press projection.

PAC organizers say election denialism in the Republican Party has become more sophisticated, highlighting that down-ballot candidates in key states are no longer always running on “Stop the Steal” messaging like in the aftermath of the 2020 election. But they still support voting restrictions and even law-enforcement involvement around voting.

‘Different shades of authoritarians’

“You’ve seen here Donald Trump and Burt Jones, who is running for governor [in Georgia], who is a fake elector and actually traveled to Washington, D.C., with a letter in his pocket for Mike Pence the night before the insurrection … he’s literally on the ballot today,” Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Baker said in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday.

Baker continued: “Donald Trump will leave office at some point, but what he has left in his wake in the Republican Party are different shades of authoritarians, and so even when he leaves, we’re not like we can’t say we are safely done with those kinds of actions being perpetrated.”

Jones, who did not face charges in the alleged fake elector plot, did not win his primary outright on Tuesday — he is headed for a June runoff.

Messina said that despite the party soul-searching that came after Harris’ election loss, the PAC is not trying to become another presidential super PAC or rival Democratic power centers separate from bodies like the Democratic National Committee, which is largely focused on congressional and gubernatorial races. It is not coordinating directly with the DNC, however. Instead, the group said it’s working directly with state parties and candidates.

“I don’t think it’s at all a condemnation of anything,” Messina said about the re-launch of the PAC. “What we’re trying to do is bring a large checkbook and a bunch of federal money.”

Messina also said the group is still trying to “figure out” its donor base. Top Democratic donors are already in the mix, but Messina highlighted that additional — even Republican or non-partisan donors — are interested in its efforts.

“There are new donors that I’ve, some of these people I’ve never met, and I’ve been in national politics for 30 years, and people are kind of rising to the top,” Messina said. 

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