Opinion ID: 3163625
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Errors in the Circuit Court’s Order

Text: - 22 - Considering the circuit court’s order in light of this precedent, we reverse for three reasons. First, while we recognize that the circuit court did not have the benefit of Hall, the Supreme Court has now stated that courts must consider all three prongs in determining an intellectual disability, as opposed to relying on just one factor as dispositive. Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 2001. We conclude that the circuit court erred in relying solely on the third prong in denying Oats’s claim. We caution, however, that our decision should not be interpreted as establishing that this will necessarily constitute a per se reversible error. But as the Supreme Court has now recognized, because these factors are interdependent, if one of the prongs is relatively less strong, a finding of intellectual disability may still be warranted based on the strength of other prongs. Id. (holding that this is a “conjunctive and interrelated assessment” and relying on the DSM-5, which provides as an example that “a person with an IQ score above 70 may have such severe adaptive behavior problems . . . that the person’s actual functioning is comparable to that of individuals with a lower IQ score”). Second, the circuit court erred in concluding that Oats failed to meet his burden without even considering or weighing all of the testimony that Oats presented. The circuit court agreed to the parties’ stipulation to consider the mental health evidence presented in the 1990 proceedings pertaining to whether Oats had an intellectual disability, as opposed to requiring the parties to recall all - 23 - of those witnesses who testified previously regarding Oats’s intellectual disability. However, in reaching its decision, the circuit court stated that it “accept[ed]” the 1990 postconviction court’s ruling and was “not in a position to reevaluate the credibility of the witnesses who testified or the evidence” the postconviction court considered in those prior proceedings. The circuit court then denied Oats’s claim, concluding that “[t]here is no competent evidence that the defendant suffered from any mental retardation prior to the age of 18.” The circuit court’s refusal to consider the 1990 evidence of Oats’s intellectual disability was error. The prior proceedings did not determine whether Oats is intellectually disabled under the statutory definition and thus ineligible for the death penalty, as the circuit court itself recognized. The case was in a different procedural posture at that time, particularly since the bar against the execution of an intellectually disabled individual did not then exist. If the circuit court, after reviewing the transcripts, determined that it was unable to evaluate the credibility of the witnesses or consider the evidence submitted in the prior postconviction proceedings, it was required to permit the parties to recall those witnesses in a new proceeding and submit the evidence so that all of the relevant evidence could be considered and weighed. In fact, in the 1990 postconviction proceedings, Oats submitted so much evidence establishing his intellectual disability that the State, in its written closing - 24 - argument to the postconviction court, stated, “Under the DSM-III criteria, the defendant falls in the mildly mentally retarded area. No doubt about that.” Thus, this evidence clearly should have been considered in the current proceeding. Finally, reversal is warranted because the circuit court applied the incorrect legal standard in analyzing whether Oats’s intellectual disability “manifested during the period from conception to age 18.” § 921.137, Fla. Stat. As the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities explains, an intellectual disability is a developmental disability and thus this prong ensures that there was “evidence of the disability during the developmental period.” Am. Ass’n on Intellectual & Developmental Disabilities, Definition of Intellectual Disability http://aaidd.org/intellectual-disability/definition#.VNDqAyvF-JQ (last visited December 2, 2015). Likewise, the United States Supreme Court has recognized that this prong simply requires that a defendant demonstrate that his “intellectual deficiencies manifested while he was in the ‘developmental stage’—that is, before he reached adulthood.” Brumfield, 135 S. Ct. at 2282. In concluding that “[t]here is no competent evidence that the defendant suffered from any mental retardation prior to the age of 18,” the circuit court rested solely upon the testimony by the State’s expert witness, Dr. McClaren, that Oats had a “[l]ack of diagnosis before 18”—testimony that the circuit court quoted in denying relief: - 25 - Well, because, first look at the onset prior to age 18. We don’t have any psychiatric evidence of his subaverage intellect two standard deviations below the norm. The closest thing that we have is a test called the Slosson, S-l-o-s-s-o-n, test, which is not as good, not as suitable for classification of people as mentally retarded or not as a Wechsler or Stanford-Binet. Also, that test was given at age 13, when he was by all accounts, undergoing pretty savage abuse and neglect and probably questioning his paternity and who his mother and father were. .... Lack of diagnosis before 18, even though there was some evidence that he had been identified with the screening tests with an IQ of 70. He is able to progress through school, despite having a very physically abusive and probably very confusing upbringing. (Emphasis added.) The circuit court did not reject the expert witness testimony presented by Oats in this proceeding or find that any of that testimony was not credible. Instead, the circuit court simply accepted Dr. McClaren’s position that, although the intelligence test given to Oats as a child produced an IQ score of 70, this test could not be relied upon to establish the manifestation of intellectual disability before age 18 because this test was “not as good . . . as a Wechsler or Stanford-Binet” and was not suitable by itself to diagnose a person as having an intellectual disability. Contrary to the circuit court’s decision, section 921.137 requires a showing only that an intellectual disability “manifested during the period from conception to age 18.” § 921.137, Fla. Stat. (emphasis added). The term “manifest” means “[t]o show or demonstrate plainly.” The American Heritage Dictionary 1067 (5th ed. 2011). Accepting the position that “manifested” equates to “diagnosed” would - 26 - render the first two prongs of the statutory test for an intellectual disability moot, as the only way to find an intellectual disability would be if the diagnosis already existed by the age of 18. Moreover, this Court has never held that the defendant must have been given a specific IQ test prior to the age of 18 in order to find an intellectual disability. That inflexible view would not be supported by the United States Supreme Court’s recent enunciations in Hall and Brumfield. See Brumfield, 135 S. Ct. at 2282 (stating that this prong merely requires that a defendant demonstrate that his intellectual deficiencies manifested “before he reached adulthood”); Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 1994 (recognizing that, based on a consensus within the medical community, this prong simply requires the “onset of these deficits during the developmental period”). As even Dr. McClaren himself recognized, the purpose of requiring the manifestation of an intellectual disability prior to age 18 is to distinguish an intellectual disability, which a person must have had as a child, from other conditions that may cause an individual’s intelligence and adaptive functioning to decline later in life, such as dementia. In other words, a person cannot acquire an intellectual disability after childhood. It appears that Dr. McClaren’s view may have been impacted by a misreading of this Court’s prior opinion in Cherry. Specifically, when Dr. McClaren was asked with more specificity as to why he did not find onset prior to - 27 - age 18, Dr. McClaren testified that while Oats was given a Slosson IQ screening test at age 13, this was not sufficient to establish onset prior to age 18 because he had to “tak[e] into consideration we have the Cherry decision that talks about 70 means 70.” He concluded that Oats had only a “70 on a test that is not appropriate for the use of diagnosis of mental retardation.” Of course, our holding in Cherry did not address onset before age 18, and the inflexible “70 means 70” rule of Cherry has now been overturned by the United States Supreme Court in Hall. Accordingly, as a result of these legal errors, the circuit court incorrectly evaluated Oats’s claim under the wrong standard. In fact, the evidence pertaining to the onset prior to age 18 prong is comparable to that in Hall, another case in which all of the parties previously recognized that the defendant suffered from intellectual disability—a premise that was challenged only after Atkins barred the execution of those with an intellectual disability. Specifically, in Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 1990-91, as it relates to the age of onset prong, the United States Supreme Court noted that Hall’s teachers identified Hall as being intellectually disabled on numerous occasions and that his siblings testified that there was “something ‘very wrong’ with [Hall] as a child” and he was “slow with speech and . . . slow to learn.” Moreover, in a strikingly similar manner to this case, Hall bore the brunt of physical abuse within the family and his mother constantly beat him because Hall was slow and made simple mistakes. Id. at 1991. - 28 - Based on that type of evidence, the Supreme Court noted that the age of onset factor was not even “at issue” in that case. Id. at 1994. See also Van Tran v. Colson, 764 F.3d 594, 613-14 (6th Cir. 2014) (remanding for a new evidentiary hearing because the state postconviction court erroneously relied on the absence of any test of intellectual functioning before the age of 18 and discounted the fact that the defendant’s childhood was marked by certain impairments during the developmental period, including his delay in reaching various milestones, because a multitude of factors could have caused those delays). Similarly, evidence presented in this case establishes that Oats was slow to reach important developmental milestones, and based on accounts from Oats’s siblings and teachers, Oats was very slow and constantly struggled to understand basic concepts and needed the type of one-on-one interaction that was available only in special education. Further, like in Hall, Oats was subjected to abuse based on his lack of ability to understand requests from his foster parents. In its decision in Hall, the Supreme Court clarified that the appropriate definition to use in determining whether an intellectual disability exists is the definition that is used by skilled professionals in making this determination in all contexts, including those “far beyond the confines of the death penalty,” such as special education, medical treatment plans, and access to social programs. 134 S. Ct. at 1993. Based on certain aspects of Dr. McClaren’s testimony, it is unclear - 29 - whether he employed a heightened standard because this is a capital case, as opposed to the standard that would normally apply to determine an intellectual disability in other contexts. However, the record clearly shows that Dr. McClaren was influenced by his misreading of Cherry and imposed additional requirements not recognized by the DSM—requirements that have since been explicitly disapproved. Thus, we direct the circuit court to permit the parties an opportunity for a new evidentiary hearing so that the parties may present additional evidence, including whether the experts’ opinions have changed from when they initially made their conclusions or have been otherwise affected by Hall, Brumfield, and other developments in the law.