Opinion ID: 63723
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: IQ tests and achievement tests

Text: Williams scored a 70 or 71 in three different IQ test administrations. Williams’s first IQ score was recorded at age 16. On July 7, 1992, the Houston Independent School District (HISD) administered to Williams the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children—III (“WISC-III”). Williams scored a verbal IQ of 79, a performance IQ of 65, and a full scale IQ of 70. Dr. Joyce Hood, who administrated these tests, interpreted the results: Jeffrey’s Full Scale score is in the Borderline range, two standard deviations below the mean, and places him in the 2nd percentile relative to children his age in the normal population. Jeffrey’s verbal score is in the Borderline range, more than one standard deviation below the mean, and in the 8th percentile relative to children his age in the normal population. Jeffrey’s performance score is in the Mentally Retarded range, more than two standard deviations below the mean, and in the 1st percentile relative to children his age in the normal population. Williams was not considered mentally retarded at the time because HISD’s cutoff for that determination was a full scale IQ score of 69. At the same testing session, Williams took several achievement tests. These tests indicated that his academic achievement in reading, math, and 6 No. 07-70006 written language was above his assessed IQ level. As the district court noted, “while [Williams’s] IQ showed that he was in the second percentile intellectually, he functioned academically in between the twenty-first and fifty-eighth percentiles.” Dr. Hood offered no explanation for this discrepancy. She did, however, state her opinion that “Jeffrey Williams is mentally retarded.” Williams next took an IQ test after his murder conviction, in a test3 administered by the defense expert, Dr. Gilda Kessner. His verbal IQ score was 70, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 664 to 76. His performance IQ score was 77, with a 95 percent confidence interval of 72 to 85. The full scale score was 71,5 with a full scale confidence interval between 68 and 76.6 Dr. Kessner also administered the Mini Mental State Examination, a test for functionality and concentration, and the REY 15, a memory test. Dr. Kessner concluded that Williams made an adequate effort on those tests and was not malingering. Dr. Kessner also administered two achievement tests.7 Williams scored in the non-mentally-retarded range on both. Dr. Kessner testified that in her opinion, Williams’s scores on various academic achievement tests were not 3 Williams completed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, Third Edition (“WAIS-III”). 4 The magistrate judge’s memorandum lists the bottom of this range as 68, but the transcript of Dr. Kessner’s testimony reveals a range of 66 to 76. 5 The magistrate judge’s memorandum lists the full scale score as 70, but the transcript of Dr. Kessner’s testimony reveals a score of 71. 6 Again, the magistrate judge mixed up these numbers. The magistrate judge lists the range as 66 to 76, but Dr. Kessner’s testimony was that the 95 percent confidence interval was 68 to 76. 7 She administered the Wide Range Achievement Test-Revision 3 (“WRAT-3”) and the Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test (“K-FAST”). On the K-FAST, Williams scored a 78 in arithmetic and an 82 in reading with a composite score of 79. Dr. Kessner noted that the confidence intervals of Williams’s K-FAST and WISC-3 scores overlapped. The 95 percent confidence interval for Williams’s WISC-3 IQ test was 68 to 76, and the 95 percent confidence interval for his F-KAST scores was 69 to 89. Of course, these are only 95 percent confidence intervals, meaning that, according to Dr. Kessner, “[f]ive times out of a hundred, you might test him and he might get outside of this [confidence interval] range.” 7 No. 07-70006 inconsistent with his IQ scores because the confidence intervals for the achievement tests overlapped with confidence intervals on the IQ tests. However, the district court concluded that Dr. Kessner presented “no credible explanation” for this discrepancy. Another expert testifying for Williams, Dr. Richard Garnett, stated that IQ testing is the best measure of intelligence because it is the broadest measure of the diffuse elements of intelligence, unlike achievement tests, which measure a narrower portion of intelligence. The government’s expert, Dr. Thomas Allen, administered the StanfordBinet V (“SB-5”) Test of Intelligence. Williams scored a non-verbal IQ of 70, a verbal IQ of 75, and a full scale IQ of 71. Dr. Allen also used Green’s Word Memory Test (“GWMT”) to assess Williams’s level of effort on the IQ test. Dr. Allen testified that he believed Williams’s low IQ score was the result of his failure to put forth a good effort on the test. Williams’s score on a portion of the GWMT was lower than if he had been randomly guessing. On another section, Williams scored so low that in Dr. Allen’s opinion, Williams was deliberately giving the wrong answers. Williams most recently took an intelligence test when he arrived on death row. A licensed professional counselor working for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice administered the TONI-3, a test of nonverbal intelligence. Williams scored a nonverbal IQ of 83, a score in the thirteenth percentile and too high to qualify Williams for a place in the counselor’s mental health case load. The district court also considered Williams’s scores in routine standardized tests administered while he was in school. In his sixth, seventh, and eighthgrade years, Williams took the Metropolitan Achievement Test (“MAT”), a national standardized achievement test. In three sittings of the exam, he scored below grade level in some subjects and above grade level in others. In a different achievement test administered in the seventh grade, the Texas Educational Assessment of Minimum Skills (“TEAMS”), Williams’s scores reflected subject 8 No. 07-70006 mastery in mathematics, reading, and writing. In the ninth grade, Williams passed the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (“TAAS”) test in reading and writing, but he failed the mathematics portion.