Smith’s case, known as Hamm v. Smith, first arrived on the Court’s doorstep in August 2023. Since then, the justices have met more than two dozen times to decide what to do about the case, and each time they’ve put the decision off until a future meeting.
No one outside of the Court can know for sure why the justices keep delaying, but if you follow the Court’s Eighth Amendment cases closely, it’s easy to see how the Hamm case could open up all kinds of internal rifts among the justices.
The Eighth Amendment, which has a vague ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” is at the center of the Hamm case because, for decades, the Court has held this amendment forbids executions of intellectually disabled offenders (and offenders who commit a crime while they are juveniles). The idea is that both groups have diminished mental capacity, at least as compared to non-disabled adults, and thus bear less moral responsibility even for homicide crimes.
That idea, however, has long been contested by the Court’s various ideological factions, and the Hamm case potentially reopens up all of the Court’s issues with the amendment at once. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario for criminal defendants, the justices could potentially overrule more than 60 years of precedents protecting against excessive punishments.
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