Wrote Justice Kennedy for a majority of the Supreme Court, in today's new case Hall v. Florida, rejecting Florida's use of the IQ of 70 as a rigid cut-off for who is "intellectually disabled" and thus not subject to the death penalty under the Court's 8th and 14th Amendment doctrine. Hall had scored 71. Hall will now have a chance to present other evidence of his disability.
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. The States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects.This was a 5-4 decision, and the 4 Justices in dissent are the ones those who follow the Court will guess. The dissenting opinion is written by Justice Alito, who says:
Because I find no consensus among the States, I would not independently assess the method that Florida has adopted for determining intellectual disability....
We have been presented with no solid evidence that the longstanding reliance on multiple IQ test scores as a measure of intellectual functioning is so unreasonable or outside the ordinary as to be unconstitutional....
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68 comments:
Am I the only one who thinks that if you could battle your way to the supreme court that's ipso facto evidence of not being disabled?
Of course, sometimes the decisions by the court itself seem to come from mentally disabled minds...
Yes, Christian, you are probably the only one. You've heard of lawyers?
Evidence that the person with the IQ of 71 has battled his way to the Supreme Court?
His lawyers have, surely; but is there evidence that he (she? tl;dr) is the brains behind it?
Am I the only one who thinks that if you could battle your way to the supreme court that's ipso facto evidence of not being disabled?
What makes you think that the defendant in this case is able to make this battle or is even much involved? He has a lawyer who has a duty to make any reasonable argument on his behalf and many very able attorneys would work pro bono on a case like this.
This is how the death penalty is going to die in America. Not through outright prohibition, since the Constitution clearly contemplates the possibility that the state may under the right circumstances deprive a person of his life. But through these periodic decisions that create substantive limitations or expensive, procedural hurdles to carrying out executions.
Bright-line rules, like the one based on age at the time of the offense, are easy to administer and thus have very little effect on the cost or desirability of keeping the death penalty. But intellectual ability is by its nature hard to assess and requires hearings and expert opinion and so forth.
There are other areas where the courts have made it difficult for states to carry out executions, e.g., whether an execution method is painful enough to violate the Eighth Amendment. We are seeing something like that right now in Oklahoma, where the government is understandably concerned about its execution method.
Christian
I doubt the defendant is really driving his legal team on this one. Often cases are picked up and funded as test cases by advocates.
I assume this works both ways? If the defendant has an IQ of 60, the prosecution could still use other evidence to show that he's sufficiently culpable to be executed? (If this is addressed in the opinion, I apologize for asking.)
I assume therefore that since magic ages for things (contract, liquor, firearms rights, etc.) are not strictly and clearly representative of the thing they proxy for (maturity), the Court will by the same logic hold that everyone under a limit can sue to be exempted, and other parties can sue to not have to treat people over the limit as qualifying?
Of course not, despite the logic being identical as to why A Hard Limit Doesn't Apply.
" Often cases are picked up and funded as test cases by advocates."
Especially on death penalty cases, even if it isn't a "test" case.
(Also, relatives.)
The defendant is not taking algebra. Half the population has an IQ of less than 100. Stupid vicious people exist just as crazy people exist. They both are capable of evil. The same applies to children but there is some (probably forlorn) hope that they can redeem themselves with age.
Maybe this summary of facts in the case will help restate and revive Christian's basic theme:
Am I the only one who thinks that if you have the mental wherewithal to kidnap, beat, rape, and murder a pregnant 21-year-old newlywed; and then to drive to a convenience store you plan to rob, and kill a sheriff’s deputy who attempts to apprehend you, that's ipso facto evidence that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual in your circumstance?
(a) The Eighth Amendment, which “reaffirms the duty of the government to respect the dignity of all persons,” Roper v. Simmons, 543 U. S. 551, prohibits the execution of persons with intellectual disability.
No it doesn't.
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted if you're stupid."
Hall abducted, raped, and murdered a victim as a part of a robbery plan.
The plan was to steal the car and use it in a robbery.
Her body was concealed after the attack.
He later participating in disarming and killing a deputy with his own weapon.
Now he's been a part of legal battles for 30 years, culminating in the Supreme Court.
Of course lawyers are doing the work. And of course he's guilty and not nearly as mentally deficient as is being claimed by himself and his defenders.
Linda S. Gottfredson, co-director of the University of Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, said, "Just about the only time I see journalists and liberals take IQ seriously is when it meets their ideological predilections. For example, they treat IQ as real when anyone claims that early intervention raises it, but not when evidence goes the other way. And so it is with crime. We are told we must not link IQ with crime, unless low IQ can be used to roll back the death penalty."
"Am I the only one who thinks that if you have the mental wherewithal to kidnap, beat, rape, and murder a pregnant 21-year-old newlywed; and then to drive to a convenience store you plan to rob, and kill a sheriff’s deputy who attempts to apprehend you, that's ipso facto evidence that the death penalty is not cruel and unusual in your circumstance?"
That is part of the evidence, and this case is only requiring looking at more evidence.
I'm against the death penalty for multiple reasons. As a Christian I don't think the state should be killing people. Additionally, DNA evidence has demonstrated that a substantial number of death penalty convictions were incorrect. The state (or at least prosecutors) have a vested interest in making someone pay for notorious crimes and in some cases does not seem very concerned with convicting the guilty person.
That said, I don't see why someones IQ should shield them from the consequences of their actions. Is the argument that someone with an IQ of 70 is not capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong? I don't believe that is true.
If you are deemed stupid, then the death penalty is waived? Why do we create this exception? It seems counter-intuitive.
An IQ of 70 and below and in the context of a capital crime is sufficient to warrant a retroactive abortion. Problem solved.
It's unconstitutional because five justices don't like the death penalty.
The constitution says whatever we want it to say.
These 5/4 decisions are doing wonders for jurisprudence in the United States.
Good lord, what a mess that decision will make. I think the Court just fails to see that rubber meets a road somewhere and their lofty little objections about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin are making justice impossible.
That the animal is still alive 30 years later is a travesty.
The only retarded people are the ones who have been advocating for the filthy savage to continue breathing.
I get it, professor. I'm just weighing in. Assuming someone is found guilty of those crimes (as in this case), I cannot fathom why an otherwise appropriate penalty (whatever that penalty may be, including execution) should be reduced based on the criminal's alleged lack of intelligence. Demanding "more evidence" on the issue of the criminal's morally irrelevant intelligence therefore only encourages similar future crimes and delays justice for the victims. If he was so disabled as to be unable to distinguish right from wrong, he would have been exonerated in the liability phase. What bearing does his intelligence have in the penalty phase? I think none. What do you think?
@MadisonMan,
small detail: a large majority of inmates on Death Row in the U.S. are male.
Without reading the article, I would assume that Hall is male.
Quick check of the linked opinion shows that Hall is indeed male.
I also learned that Hall committed the crime in 1978, and was sentenced that year. This was before the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion barring execution of those suffering from "intellectual disability".
I don't know how many other commenters here can say this: but the crime and sentence both happened before I was born.
I understand the need to allow lawyers time to find errors in the State's presentation of the crime, mitigating circumstances, and other legal challenges to the death penalty.
But why is this man still alive, more then 30 years after the crime and sentencing?
Is this the result of decades of lawyers finding ways to slow down the legal process of turning a capital-crime conviction into an accomplished execution?
It's all misguided. The death penalty shows the defendant the respect that taking the consequences of your actions gives.
Any IQ is fine.
They're all humans.
Usually when people disparage. The use of IQ, it's because they believe it unfairly labels a person as less intelligent. In this case it oddly seems they are saying it makes the person appear smarter than they are...
"Impairment is a condition, not a number... This is not to say that a BAC is unhelpful. It is of considerable significance, as the medical community recognizes. But in using these scores to assess a defendant’s eligibility for penalty X, a State must afford these test scores the same studied skepticism that those who design and use the tests do, and understand that an BAC test score represents a range rather than a fixed number."
Just wanted to see if another argument could be made the same way.
"Florida’s law contravenes our Nation’s commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world."
Where is that in the Constitution?
I wonder if there is disparate impact, based on this 'standard'?
If you are too stupid to deliberately bomb an IQ test, when doing so might save your life, then maybe you are too stupid to understand right and wrong.
OTOH, if you are too stupid to understand right and wrong, then you have no moral agency and are therefore not fully human. The criteria for death should then be along the lines we use when putting down a vicious animal.
There have always been limits on the culpability of some insane defendants so it makes sense to make similar provisions for people with severe mental impairment. Whether an IQ test is the appropriate way to measure that impairment is an open question. IQ tests are standardized for the mean, but are they really valid at the extremes? For example, could an IQ test really measure Einstein's intelligence?
If we accept IQ tests as valid measurements for the ability of an individual to give consent or to bear responsibility for his/her actions, should we extend that testing competence to other areas. For instance, states used to sterilize the mentally incompetent. If someone is so stupid that they can kill and not know it is wrong, should they be privileged to procreate children?
Ghoulish reading, isn't it?
Basic assumptions of jurisprudence: Man is a moral being. That is why a man can be for amoral acts. Animals are not punished for killing because an animals are not moral beings (with the exception of Zeus).
The mental incapacity to "know right from wrong" is a standard of where a man becomes an animal and can not be punished.
This rule uses an IQ test presumption. That is not fair to the more intelligent animals. We would end up executing pigs all of the time...hmmm!
If such a person ever registered as a Democrat, that is positive proof of mental incompetency.
I'm certain that lots of commenters here have IQs of 130+. Is the chasm between 130 and 100 really so wide that it removes culpability if on the other side?
The Eighth Amendment is written conjunctively, i.e., a punishment must be both cruel AND unusual to be prohibited, but it seems the courts in effect interpret the provision disjunctively. In the case of the death penalty, whenever a "national consensus" develops against a punishment, the Court decides that the punishment has become "unusual" and thus ripe for constitutional banning. It doesn't really seem to have anything to do with cruelty.
Perhaps the Court presumes that the judgment of the states necessarily implies a judgment about cruelty. But as I read the text, cruelty is a separate element altogether that has to be independently established. Moreover, I think of cruelty as the infliction of pain and nothing more. If the death penalty is administered painlessly, then under a literal reading of the Eighth Amendment there is no conceivable constitutional basis to forbid it. In short, to reach the results the Court has been reaching, the drafters should have used the word "or" instead of "and."
My reading, of course, is at odds with the Court's and it's their opinion that matters.
I thought the standard used to be whether the perpetrator had enough sense to grasp the difference between right and wrong. What has IQ to do with that?
Oh yes, there will be a disparate impact based on this number. 16% of black people will be considered too stupid to bear the consequences available to others.
Doesn't this whole issue stem from "Of Mice and Men"? Lennie was a simpleton (i.e., retarded person) who killed someone, but we really knew he was a good guy, who shouldn't be punished for his action.
Sounds like the perp in this case was truly evil (assuming there's no reasonable doubt he did what he was convicted of). The seminal error was the Supreme Court's, in ruling that mental retardation is relevant to the punishment for such crimes. Given that error, further errors in trying to apply the rule are inevitable.
Well, it's official.
We can no longer execute Kennedy, Sotomayor, Kagan, Ginsburg, or Breyer no matter how heinous their crime.
If your IQ is 70 or less, I don't think you should be voting, either.
Half the population has an IQ of less than 100.
Does 100 represent the average IQ or the median IQ?
If an IQ of 70 is too low to be held fully accountable for the crime of murder, why isn't IQ 70 too low to vote?
Freeman Hunt,
Dang, you beat me to it.
There is this assumption that "normal" IQs start at, oh, 90 and up. But it's called a "bell curve" for a reason, you know.
That means that for every person 130+, there's (more or less) one 70-. Are we to declare all the latter mentally incompetent? Or only the ones who commit capital crimes?
well, if retards are incapable of being held responsible for murdering people, maybe they should be put in camps and prevented from doing acts they cannot be held responsible for. If he cannot be executed, would it not follow that he must be released to kill again?
Blogger SomeoneHasToSayIt said...
If your IQ is 70 or less, I don't think you should be voting, either.
5/27/14, 5:58 PM
___________________________
What are the drivers of the vans that backup to the group homes going to do on election day if that happens?
"A [Supreme Court Decision] is an approximation, not a final and infallible assessment of intellectual functioning...."
"Intellectual disability is a condition, not a number... This is not to say that a [Supreme Court Decision] is unhelpful. It is of considerable significance, as the [legal] community recognizes. But in using these [opinions] to assess a defendant’s eligibility for the death penalty, a State must afford these [opinions] the same studied skepticism that those who design and use the [opinions] do, and understand that a [Supreme Court decision] represents a range rather than a fixed [outcome].
Fixed.
President Mom Jeans certainly raised the level of discourse today.
Does this mean we'll have to stop euthanizing vicious pit bulls?
Since Hall is black the IQ test that he took was culturally biased against him resulting in a lower score than he deserved.Shouldn't that have been taken into consideration?
50-70 is classified as mild mental retardation. That shouldn't get anyone off of a murder charge.
It's only about the death penalty. The person is still guilty and has life in prison. That's not going to change.
"That the animal is still alive 30 years later is a travesty.
The only retarded people are the ones who have been advocating for the filthy savage to continue breathing."
I would be willing to accept a compromise where we kill a couple of his lawyers instead.
Sorry, just as abortion is murder, so is execution. If you're a christian, invariably you have to come to that understanding. Took me decades. Leave 'em in prison forever, whats the harm. Almost nothing is 100%, death is, that's reasonable doubt enough to not kill someone.
here's a harsh reality. The mother of my grandson has an IQ of 74. Yes, she knows right from wrong. No, you can not reason with her. The closest analogy i can come up with (because of my country upbringing) is having a willful dog. You can train them, talk to them, punish them, ignore them, that dog is going to do what it wants, period. And so with she.
Contemporary views of intellectual disability place a greater emphasis on surveying an individual's adaptive functioning (i.e. their capacity to carry out activities of daily living) in conjunction with the results of intelligence tests. To be identified as intellectually disabled, current views require that one must exhibit very low scores on both an IQ test and an appropriately administer measure of adaptive functioning. By emphasizing the need for an intellectually disabled individual to possess significant impairments in adaptive behavior in conjunction with low IQ, current conceptualizations recognize the limitations inherent in relying on single (or even multiple) IQ scores to appraise an individual's capacity to function in the real world.
Conversely, should people with IQ's above 120 be put to death more frequently than average because they were way smart enough to know better?
An IQ test is a snapshot. Does timing of the test matter? Anyone taking it after the fact will score a 65.
Perhaps test prep courses will be developed to aid criminals in scoring low before they commit a crime.
Where do these rules come from? This is one of the issues with making hard laws based on specific criteria. Is it because of a specific case, or a whole range of cases? I suspect the former which now has to be applied to everyone in such a predicament.
And this is where it fails. As we keep piling on laws to 'protect' people from (whatever) it simply opens a floodgate of those to take advantage of such a law.
Live by the law, die by the law.
Quaestor said...
Half the population has an IQ of less than 100.
Does 100 represent the average IQ or the median IQ?
That isnt reall important. What is important is tha half the population is on the left hand side of the bell curve. Those are democrats.
Or the folks that ride the short bus.
Why life in prison and not death? Either he's culpable or he's not.
At any rate, this is legislature and jury stuff. The Supreme Court should have stayed out of this one.
Especially if the guy's mental deficiency was already brought up at the death penalty hearing and already considered by the jury.
Hey, Crack! Any chance of cutting the murder victim's family a break on reparations?
The doctrine came about initially because of the prospect of giving the death penalty to a person who did not understand what it meant to get the death penalty. That is, he didn't get the concept that he would be dead. See what is fundamentally shocking about killing someone as a punishment if they don't understand what that means?
If a man is less culpable for heinous crimes based on his mental ability, doesn't it necessarily follow that he should also have less freedom and more supervision?
If we accept that mildly retarded people can't be held to the same standard of law, shouldn't we bar them from living independently?
I think there are consequences to this line of reasoning.
To pick up on something that Illumanati said: The decision before this held that some people (maybe a fairly large number of people) are mentally too incompetent to be executed.
Are the same people then too incompetent to vote? To procreate? To live independently?
The Constitution says nothing explicitly about that, as it said nothing explicit about someone being too incompetent to kill.
"Animals are not punished for killing because an animals are not moral beings"
Maybe not as "punishment" but animals are "put down" all the time if they have attacked people.
Why isn't the decision to execute or not based on something like "threat to the community should the criminal escape" rather than IQ? We're perfectly willing to execute criminal geniuses at one end of the continuum, and dangerous canines at the other. Why should dangerous retards get a break?
"The doctrine came about initially because of the prospect of giving the death penalty to a person who did not understand what it meant to get the death penalty. That is, he didn't get the concept that he would be dead. See what is fundamentally shocking about killing someone as a punishment if they don't understand what that means?"
Why do we call it the "justice system"?
Even the most technicality smart person can be the most absolutely stupid one.
IQ is a estimation at best.
Althouse:
See what is fundamentally shocking about killing someone as a punishment if they don't understand what that means?
5/28/14, 7:12 AM
No, I don't. Do you see what is fundamentally shocking about leaving such a one alive?
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