On Monday, March 3, an argument ensued in front of the Supreme Court for the case of Freddie Lee Hall v. Florida, in which Hall, who has been on death row for 35 years for committing two murders, could be sentenced to death as a mentally disabled person.
Hall is on the edge of being considered mentally disabled based on his most recent IQ score, according to Florida’s standards.
This brings up the issue: what determines if a person is mentally disabled and is a rigid cut off for the IQ score appropriate? I believe that an IQ test is not enough to determine if one is mentally disabled and the assessment should be much more intensive.
Hall is a 68-year-old man in Florida who was labeled as “mentally retarded” in the 1950s during school when that was the term widely used.
In February of 1978, Hall was convicted for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and murdering a 21-year-old woman who was seven months pregnant. This crime is what sentenced him to death and placed him on death row.
It was left up to the state to determine what qualified a person as mentally disabled. According to Huffington Post’s Mark Sherman, Hall has taken nine IQ tests between 1968 and 2008, scoring between 60 and 80. According to the state, his most recent scores were between 69 and 74.
In the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court ruled it was against the Eighth Amendment to execute a mentally disabled person on account of cruel and unusual punishment.
Florida considers those with IQs up to 75 as mildly mentally disabled and eligible for help getting a job, but the same does not apply in the state’s prison system. Instead, the rigid cut off is 70 which means that if an inmate has an IQ of 71, the person qualifies for the death penalty.
Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, before Maryland repealing the death penalty, also chose 70 as the deciding IQ score based on statistics used by clinicians. Florida’s policy states that usually an inmate would go through a total of three steps that would involve an IQ test first, then an array of psychiatric and psychological assessment.
In Florida, if the inmate scores above a 70, they simply do not move on to the other forms of assessment even if they show other indications of being disabled.
An IQ test alone is not a good measure of intellectual ability and leaves too much room for error. In the Supreme Court discussions, several solutions were suggested by Hall’s lawyer as well as the Supreme Court judges. The first was taking the test multiple times and finding a composite score rather than an average.
The next proposed solution was administering a margin of error plus or minus five points of the IQ score of 70. This last suggestion would result in abolishing the rigid score and allowing those scoring under 75 to be considered mentally disabled, including Hall.
When Judge Stephen G. Breyer suggested having a statistician expert explain the statistics involved in determining a mental disability and possibly adopting the margin of error of five points, Florida’s lawyer replied, “What is so terrible about doing [that] is you would end up increasing the number of people who would be eligible for a mental retardation finding.”
But won’t these recommended changes just allow those who are truly mentally disabled to be relieved of the death penalty?
Some may think others will try to prove they are mentally disabled after they have been placed on death row, but this will be extremely difficult to accomplish.
As said by Seth P. Waxman, Hall’s lawyer, in the Supreme Court’s discussion, mental disability is not a condition which emerges halfway through one’s life, unlike mental illness. In order for one to be considered mentally disabled, it must emerge early in life.
Although there is no denying the crimes Hall committed were horrific and brutal, those with an intellectual disability often do not have the same level of moral capacity as those without mental disability who committed such crimes, as said in the 2002 case of Atkins v. Virginia.
There is no harm in evaluating an inmate further to make sure no error is made in an evaluation. It will take more resources in the jails as well as more time but if it prevents the Eighth Amendment from being violated, there should be no reason to prevent this change.
Florida’s current standards are not promoting the well-being of those with mental disabilities and if Florida is allowed to continue such policies, they would inevitably end up putting mentally disabled inmates to death.
Florida’s overall policy and heavy reliance on IQ tests is an infringement of the Eighth Amendment for those with an intellectual disability.
Taylor Howe can be contacted at thowe@keene-equinox.com