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US supreme court bars Florida from using IQ score cutoff for executions US supreme court bars Florida from using IQ score cutoff for executions
(about 2 hours later)
The supreme court says states must look beyond an intelligence test score in borderline cases of mental disability to determine whether a death row inmate is eligible to be executed. An intellectually disabled Florida man on death row for 36 years has been reprieved by the US supreme court which ruled it was unconstitutional for the state to refuse to take into account other mental factors beside a borderline IQ test.
The justices said in a 5-4 ruling Tuesday that Florida cannot rely solely on an IQ score above 70 to bar an inmate from claiming mental disability. Justice Anthony Kennedy said for the court that IQ tests have a margin of error and that inmates whose scores fall within the margin must be allowed to present other evidence of mental disability. Freddie Lee Hall was sentenced to death in 1978 for taking part in the kidnap, rape and murder of a pregnant woman while stealing her car for a grocery store robbery that also led to the killing of a sheriff's deputy.
A score of 70 is widely accepted as a marker of mental disability, but medical professionals say people who score as high as 75 can be considered intellectually disabled because of the test's margin of error. But Florida's supreme court refused to review the sentence in light of various evidence that he had the mental age of a toddler, arguing he scored 71 on an IQ test rather than the strict limit of 70 that the state uses to determine whether capital punishment is permissible.
More soon … A narrow majority of US supreme court justices has now ruled against this decision on the grounds that the error rate in most IQ tests meant sentencing judges should have considered other evidence to decide whether Hall qualified as sufficiently mentally impaired.
“The death penalty is the gravest sentence our society may impose. Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the constitution prohibits their execution,” wrote justice Anthony Kennedy in a majority opinion that was opposed by four others on the nine-strong bench including Chief Justice John Roberts.
“Florida’s law contravenes our nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilised world,” added Kennedy.
Earlier court hearings had heard evidence from Hall's teachers and a number of doctors that he was “significantly mentally retarded” and raised “under the most horrible family circumstances imaginable,” which included being beaten up to 10 or 15 times a week by his mother for being “slow”.
However, Florida was alone among US states in not allowing other evidence of intellectual disability to be taken into account and had dismissed the results of two other IQ tests that scored below 70 for “evidentiary reasons”.
In total he took part in nine IQ evaluations over 40 years, with scores ranging from 60 to 80, but 70 was chosen as the cut-off point because it is two standard deviations below the average test score of 100.
Justice Kennedy said a range should be used to determine the cut off because of the risk of error and based the ruling on an earlier supreme court case that determined that “no legitimate penological purpose is served by executing a person with intellectual disability.”
“To do so contravenes the eighth amendment [of the constitution], for to impose the harshest of punishments on an intellectually disabled person violates his or her inherent dignity as a human being,” added Kennedy.
Hall is one of the longest serving prisoners on death row in America, coming close to a record set by another Florida inmate Gary Alvord, who died of natural causes after 40 years facing the death sentence.
The reversal of the Florida ruling by the US supreme court provides Hall with a reprieve from the current sentence but does not preclude a re-sentencing of the case that takes into account a broader range of mental factors.
His accomplice in the original 1978 crime was sentenced to life imprisonment and Hall's death sentence for killing the police officer had already been overturned due to lack of evidence of premeditation.