Opinion ID: 3178473
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: IQ Tests

Text: Before trial, Cardona filed a motion to determine if she was intellectually disabled, which the trial court denied following an evidentiary hearing. Cardona - 22 - argues that the trial court erred in refusing to consider her IQ scores when addressing her intellectual disability claim. We agree and address the IQ test issue because it will arise if Cardona again raises intellectual disability as a bar to execution and as mitigation. Prior to this retrial, Cardona alleged that she suffered from an intellectual disability, which would make her ineligible for the death penalty. In order to prove intellectual disability, a defendant must show “significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, deficits in adaptive functioning (the inability to learn basic skills and adjust behavior to changing circumstances), and onset of these deficits during the developmental period.” Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986, 1994 (2014). A hearing was held prior to the guilt phase, during which numerous psychologists and psychiatrists testified regarding tests they had administered on Cardona. After reviewing all of the evidence, the trial court concluded that there was no clear and convincing evidence that Cardona is intellectually disabled because there was no valid IQ test with a score below 70 and there was no clear and convincing evidence that she has deficits in adaptive functioning. Three experts tested Cardona’s IQ, and all of them attempted to accommodate the fact that Cardona is of Cuban descent, and her primary language is Spanish. One expert examined Cardona in February 1992 and tested her with the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) and the Escala de - 23 - Inteligencia de Wechsler para Adultos (EIWA), testifying that the difference between these two tests was important because some of the questions are culturebased. When administering the WAIS-R, he translated the WAIS-R into Spanish and then translated Cardona’s answers into English, which he recognized compromised the test’s validity somewhat. However, according to this expert, in such situations, translating the test in such a manner is an acceptable practice because although a standardized test in the native language of the person being tested is ideal, it is not always possible. A second expert administered the WAISIII—an IQ test in English—and translated it into Spanish. Cardona received a 61 as her verbal IQ score and a performing IQ score of 68, with a full scale IQ score of 61. Finally, a third expert approached the language problem by administering the WAIS-III performance subtest but not the verbal portion of the IQ test. On the WAIS-III subtest, Cardona obtained a performing IQ score of 72. By the time this third expert evaluated Cardona, the EIWA was too old and was no longer in print. The trial court denied Cardona’s motion because Cardona failed to prove that she has an IQ below 70, and rejected these IQ scores because the experts administered a version of the WAIS by translating the test into Spanish and then translating Cardona’s responses into English. The trial court mentioned that it was confined by the Florida Administrative Code, which permits only specific tests, such as the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale, and - 24 - other valid tests that are administered and interpreted by trained personnel in conformance with the instructions provided by the producer of the test. To the extent that the trial court’s conclusion is based upon a lack of “valid WAIS” scores, the trial court erred. The trial court interpreted the language of the Florida Administrative Code too rigidly and effectively discarded the accommodations made by all of the trained experts to overcome the language barrier because the WAIS and other similar tests were not produced and normed for Spanish-speakers. The intellectual disability proceedings in this case occurred prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Hall. In Hall, the Supreme Court held that Florida’s rigid application of a definition of intellectual disability violated the Constitution because it “disregards established medical practice” by taking an IQ score as “final and conclusive evidence of a defendant’s intellectual capacity, when experts in the field would consider other evidence” and by relying on a “purportedly scientific measurement of the defendant’s abilities, his IQ score, while refusing to recognize that the score is, on its own terms, imprecise.” Hall, 134 S. Ct. at 1995. The trial court’s order in this case suffers from a similar failing because the experts who tested Cardona made accommodations that they considered acceptable in the field in order to provide the best estimate possible as to her IQ, in light of the fact that the tests available to them were not as reliable in this situation. - 25 - The trial court did not have the benefit of the Hall decision at the time it made its findings. The experts explained that the accommodations that they made were required because no suitable test was available to Cardona, a Spanishspeaking woman of Cuban descent. Under Hall, the trial court should not have discarded the experts’ testing and accommodations based solely on the conclusion that her IQ results were unreliable because they were translated from English. Therefore, in a subsequent intellectual disability hearing, the trial court should not disregard the IQ tests that the experts deem most accommodating considering the cultural and language issues and should also perform a comprehensive analysis of all three prongs as set forth in Hall and its progeny. See Oats v. State, Fla. L. Weekly S705 (Fla. Dec. 17, 2015).