Summary
U. S. Supreme Court decision announcing that, when determining the IQ of a murder defendant who claims he is ineligible for the death penalty because he is mentally retarded, states should not use a rigid cutoff score that does not account for a margin of error. The case involved a murderer’s claim that the IQ requirement for mental retardation should be expanded from a score of below 70 to a range of 67 to 75. In 1981, Freddie Lee Hall, and an accomplice, kidnapped a 21-year-old pregnant woman from a grocery store parking lot and drove her into the woods where she was raped, beaten, and shot to death. After two decades of appeals upholding Hall’s conviction and sentence, the Supreme Court decided in another case that executing the mentally retarded was unconstitutional. At that time, the Florida Legislature had already adopted a nationally accepted standard, which included an IQ below 70 to qualify. Hall, whose lowest admissible IQ score was 71, asked the Supreme Court to broaden the range to include him. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear Hall’s appeal, CJLF accepted the Florida Attorney General’s request to join the case. CJLF argued that standards for mental retardation should be left up to the states. Otherwise, well-deserved sentences for clearly guilty murderers will be held up for years as these issues are endlessly reviewed.
