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The Supreme Court hands a rare victory to a death row inmate

An image from 2000 of the Texas death chamber in Huntsville. | Joe Raedle/Newsmakers The Supreme Court announced on Thursday that it will not decide Hamm v. Smith, a case involving a genuinely difficult constitutional question about whether an Alabama inmate may lawfully be executed. The immediate upshot of this decision is that Joseph Clifton Smith, who’s at the heart of this case, will not be killed. Smith prevailed in the federal appeals court that previously heard his case. And the fact that the justices decided not to decide Hamm — they dismissed it “as improvidently granted,” to...