A man set to die in Alabama for the 1997 brutal slaying of a Mobile County man can’t be executed because he’s intellectually disabled, an appeals court ruled Friday.

Joseph Clifton Smith, 53, has been on Alabama Death Row for over 25 years. The U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals decision Friday means, unless overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, he won’t be put to death. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office has not yet responded to requests for comment if they would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Smith’s court battle has been waged in the federal court system for years, with his lawyers from the Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama arguing Smith is intellectually disabled and can’t be put to death under precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court.

In May 2017, Smith testified at an evidentiary hearing in the U.S. District Court in south Alabama.

Senior U.S. District Judge Callie Granade ruled in August 2021 that Smith was intellectually disabled and “cannot constitutionally be executed.”

“As the Court stated previously, this is a close case, but the evidence indicates that Smith’s intelligence and adaptive functioning has been deficient throughout his life,” the judge wrote. “Smith intelligence falls at the low end of the Borderline range of intelligence and at worst at the high end of the required significantly subaverage intellectual functioning.”

The Alabama Attorney General’s Office appealed that ruling to the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, and oral arguments were held on the case this spring.

The appeals court’s Friday ruling means, if not appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Smith will be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Smith was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death for the November 1997 murder of Durk Van Dam. Police found Van Dam’s body badly beaten near his pick-up truck in an isolated area of Mobile County. Smith confessed to the killing, according to court records, and initially told police conflicting versions of the crime.

During trial, a forensic pathologist testified that Van Dam died as a result of 35 different blunt-force injuries to his body.

Currently, there are 167 inmates on Alabama Death Row.