The Supreme Court gave greater protection Tuesday to death row inmates seeking to prove they should not be executed because they are intellectually disabled, and it ruled that laws such as those in Florida and Virginia are too rigid.
The court ruled 5 to 4 that
state laws that draw a bright line on IQ-test results are unconstitutional. Under those laws, an inmate who scores above 70 on the test does not meet the first step of proving that he or she is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
Florida, Virginia and Kentucky have such laws, and a handful of others have similar rules.
It was the
court’s first consideration of state laws defining mental retardation in capital cases since its 2002 decision in
Atkins v. Virginia that executing the mentally retarded violated the Constitution’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
In that decision, the court left it up to states to define intellectual disability. But those state determinations must meet constitutional requirements respecting “the gravest sentence our society may impose,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in the majority opinion released Tuesday. He was joined in the decision by the court’s four liberals.
“Florida seeks to execute a man because he scored a 71 instead of a 70 on an IQ test,” Kennedy wrote, adding that experts agree that any number on an IQ test is an imprecise measurement. “Persons facing that most severe sanction must have a fair opportunity to show that the Constitution prohibits their execution. Florida’s law contravenes our nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world.”
Click here to read the full articleSource: The Washington Post, May 27, 2014
US supreme court bars Florida from using IQ score cutoff for executions
Intellectually disabled man reprieved by high court which ruled it unconstitutional for state to solely use IQ test to determine whether capital punishment is permissible 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.
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.
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.
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.
Click here to read the full article Source: The Guardian, May 27, 2014
