Opinion ID: 4535750
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Intellectual Disability as a Bar to Execution

Text: In 2002, the United States Supreme Court held in Atkins that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution forbid the execution of persons with intellectual disability. Atkins, 536 U.S. at 321. The Court observed that “clinical definitions of [intellectual disability] require not only subaverage intellectual functioning, but also significant limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, and self-direction that became manifest before age 18.” Id. at 318. The Atkins Court further noted that an IQ between 70 and 75 or lower “is typically considered the cutoff IQ score for the intellectual function prong of the [intellectual disability] definition,” id. at 309 n.5, but it did not define -7- subaverage intellectual functioning as having an IQ of 75 or below or mandate that courts take the SEM into account or permit defendants who present a score of 75 or below to present additional evidence of intellectual disability. Instead, the Court explicitly granted states discretion to determine how to comply with its prohibition on execution of the intellectually disabled. Id. at 317 (“As was our approach in Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399 (1986), with regard to insanity, ‘we leave to the State[s] the task of developing appropriate ways to enforce the constitutional restriction upon [their] execution of sentences.’ ” (alterations in original)). Under Florida law, “ ‘intellectual disability’ means significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested during the period from conception to age 18.” § 921.137(1), Fla. Stat. (2017). “Significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning” is defined as “performance that is two or more standard deviations from the mean score on a standardized intelligence test specified in the rules of the Agency for Persons with Disabilities.” Id. “Adaptive behavior” “means the effectiveness or degree with which an individual meets the standards of personal independence and social responsibility expected of his or her age, cultural group, and community.” Id. Thus, to establish intellectual disability as a bar to execution, a defendant must demonstrate (1) significantly subaverage general -8- intellectual functioning; (2) concurrent deficits in adaptive behavior; and (3) manifestation of the condition before age eighteen. Until Hall, Florida law required that a defendant have an IQ of 70 or below in order to meet the first prong of the intellectual disability standard—significantly subaverage intellectual functioning. See Cherry v. State, 959 So. 2d 702, 712-13 (Fla. 2007) (“One standard deviation on the WAIS-III, the IQ test administered in the instant case, is fifteen points, so two standard deviations away from the mean of 100 is an IQ score of 70. As pointed out by the circuit court, the statute does not use the word approximate, nor does it reference the SEM. Thus, the language of the statute and the corresponding rule are clear.”), abrogated by Hall, 572 U.S. 701. Thus, a defendant was required to present an IQ score of 70 or below in order to establish the first prong of the intellectual disability standard. Failure to present the requisite IQ score precluded a finding of intellectual disability. In Hall, the Supreme Court held that Florida’s “rigid rule” interpreting section 921.137(1) as establishing a strict IQ test score cutoff of 70 or less in order to present additional evidence of intellectual disability “creates an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed, and thus is unconstitutional.” 572 U.S. at 704. The Court further held that when assessing the subaverage intellectual functioning prong of the intellectual disability standard, courts must take into account the standard error of measurement of IQ tests, which -9- is five points. Id. at 723. And “when a defendant’s IQ test score falls within the test’s acknowledged and inherent margin of error [±5], the defendant must be able to present additional evidence of intellectual disability, including testimony regarding adaptive deficits.” Id. In Walls, we considered whether, under the standards set out in Witt v. State, 387 So. 2d 922 (Fla. 1980), Hall warranted retroactive application to cases on collateral review. Walls, 213 So. 3d at 346. Under Witt, a change in the law “only appl[ies] retroactively if the change ‘(a) emanates from this Court or the United States Supreme Court, (b) is constitutional in nature, and (c) constitutes a development of fundamental significance.’ ” Id. (quoting Witt, 387 So. 2d at 931). We acknowledged that “[i]t is without question that the Hall decision emanates from the United States Supreme Court and is constitutional in nature.” Id. Regarding the third prong of the Witt analysis, a decision is of fundamental significance when it either (1) places beyond the authority of the state the power to regulate certain conduct or to impose certain penalties or (2) when the rule is of sufficient magnitude to necessitate retroactive application under the retroactivity test of Stovall v. Denno, 388 U.S. 293, 297 (1967), and Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 636 (1965). See id.; Hernandez v. State, 124 So. 3d 757, 764 (Fla. 2012); Witt, 387 So. 2d at 929. In concluding that Hall met the third prong of the Witt analysis, we declared “that Hall warrants retroactive application as a - 10 - development of fundamental significance that places beyond the State of Florida the power to impose a certain sentence—the sentence of death for individuals within a broader range of IQ scores than before.” Walls, 213 So. 3d at 346. Based on this declaration, we determined that Hall warranted retroactive application. Upon further consideration, we have determined that this Court clearly erred in reaching that conclusion and we now recede from our decision in Walls.