Opinion ID: 2796228
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Dr. Gilbert Macvaugh

Text: ¶39. Dr. Macvaugh testified that he is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist at the Mississippi State Hospital. He and a forensic evaluation team, including Gugliano and Dr. Reb McMichael, performed a mental evaluation of Chase on January 11, 2010, and generated a report. Dr. Macvaugh’s report stated that Dr. Macvaugh had relied on court records, school 22 records, hospital records, correctional records from 1990-2009, prior testing, Dr. Perry’s psychological evaluation, a report by S. Ray Pate Jr. dated February 14, 1990, a handwritten statement by Chase, a three-hour-and-twenty-five-minute clinical interview with Chase, and psychological testing performed by Gugliano, including the WAIS-IV, the WRAT-4, and the TOMM. ¶40. Dr. Macvaugh’s report stated that Chase was forty-one years old and never had been married. The report discussed Chase’s prior mental evaluations. Dr. Perry performed a mental evaluation of Chase on December 11, 1989, after his arrest for capital murder. Dr. Perry administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), which showed that Chase had a full-scale IQ score of 71. He had a verbal IQ score of 77 and a performance IQ score of 64. Dr. Perry did not test for malingering, but he noted that Chase had not appeared to put forth his best effort in the performance part of the test. However, he believed the testing gave a “fairly good estimate” of Chase’s mental ability. Dr. Perry also administered the Weschler Memory Scale, on which Chase attained a 99, in the average range. He also gave Chase the WRAT-R, which showed Chase had reading recognition skills at the tenth-grade level and spelling and arithmetic skills at the seventh-grade level. Dr. Perry found Chase competent to stand trial, and he deemed his intellectual ability to be “at least in the borderline range.” ¶41. On February 14, 1990, Dr. Ray Pate performed a psychiatric evaluation of Chase at the Copiah County Detention Center. He noted that, after his capital-murder arrest, Chase had attempted suicide and had been hospitalized, but that the next day he was deemed 23 medically safe and returned to jail. Dr. Pate was unable to detect any memory deficit or mental illness. Dr. Mark Webb evaluated Chase’s mental functioning on February 4, 1998, as part of Chase’s effort to secure a hearing on intellectual disability. Dr. Webb reviewed Chase’s medical records and prior mental evaluations. He found that the thirteen-point difference between Chase’s verbal score of 77 and performance score of 64 on the WAIS-R was indicative of a learning disability and adaptive behavior deficiency. He found to a reasonable degree of psychiatric certainty that Chase suffered from mild mental retardation and that further evaluation was necessary.
¶42. Dr. Macvaugh concluded, to a reasonable degree of psychological certainty, that Chase has borderline intellectual functioning and is not intellectually disabled within the meaning of Atkins. Regarding the intellectual functioning prong, Dr. Macvaugh found that Chase’s test results showed a full-scale IQ score of 71 and that he was not malingering. But Dr. Macvaugh noted that, while nothing indicated Chase had attempted to seem more cognitively impaired than he really was, other factors may have affected his performance on intelligence testing. These factors included that Chase had been transferred to the facility in the very early morning, had vomited prior to the testing and had not been eating well, and was sleepy and fatigued during testing.
¶43. Regarding the adaptive behavior prong, Dr. Macvaugh testified that school records are one of the most important tools in assessing intellectual disability. He provided a detailed 24 review of Chase’s educational history. Records from the Hazlehurst City School District showed that Chase failed tenth grade and dropped out of school during his second attempt to pass tenth grade. He had failed no other grades and lacked any history of special education services. In contrast with Dr. Reschly’s finding that special education had not been available while Chase was in school, Dr. Macvaugh determined from his investigation that special education services had been available in Chase’s school at least as early as 1980. He found it significant that Chase had never been referred for special education, although he admitted that not all intellectually disabled children are identified in school. ¶44. Dr. Macvaugh also found that Chase’s grades were inconsistent with intellectual disability. Chase had made straight A’s in the first grade and his grades continued to be above average until the sixth grade, when they began to decline, culminating in his failure of the tenth grade. In sixth grade, Chase was administered the California Achievement Test and scored in the twenty-second percentile; Dr. Macvaugh opined that this score was inconsistent with intellectual disability because an intellectually disabled person would be expected to score in the second percentile or below. ¶45. Dr. Macvaugh also found that Chase had given an average performance on the Weschler Memory Scale, which is inconsistent with intellectual disability, and he described how persons with intellectual disability demonstrate difficulty taking that test. On the WRAT-4, Chase demonstrated reading recognition skills at the tenth-grade level and spelling and arithmetic skills at the seventh-grade level. Dr. Macvaugh found Chase’s WRAT-4 scores did not indicate intellectual disability. Additionally, Dr. Macvaugh found that the 25 vocabulary usage, speech patterns, and social skills Chase demonstrated at his interview at the state hospital were inconsistent with a person who suffers from intellectual disability. Dr. Macvaugh found that Chase’s knowledge of football exceeded the abstract-thinking abilities of one with intellectual disability. ¶46. Dr. Macvaugh also reviewed Chase’s employment history, which revealed employment for short periods of time. When Chase left school, he spent twenty-three months in the Job Corps in South Carolina. There, he learned welding and earned a welder’s certificate. He then moved to Illinois and worked brief periods simultaneously at a plastic company and at a Wendy’s restaurant. Chase said that he left Illinois when the weather turned cold. He returned to Hazlehurst and worked at Kitchens’ Brothers Lumber Company for about two months. According to Dr. Pate’s report, Chase left Kitchens’ Brothers because the pay was low, the work was hard, and he could not satisfy his supervisor. Then, he got a job working for a construction company that was building a bridge and left when the job was complete. But Chase told Dr. Macvaugh that he worked on the bridge job as a welder for about three weeks and left because he had become overheated. Chase said that the longest period of time he had been employed was about three weeks. He reported that, between jobs, he earned extra income washing cars and doing yard work. Dr. Macvaugh found Chase’s work history, including his work as a welder and his working at two jobs simultaneously, did not evince significant adaptive functioning deficits. ¶47. Dr. Macvaugh also reviewed Chase’s history of substance abuse and criminal activity. Chase’s correctional records indicated that he used alcohol and marijuana. Chase told Dr. 26 Macvaugh that he also had used cocaine, ecstasy, and speed. Chase told Dr. Macvaugh and Dr. Pate that he had helped steal a car as a teenager, and that he had been on probation. Chase also reported having been accused of breaking into stores. He was not sent to a training school or alternative school. ¶48. Dr. Macvaugh admitted that it would have been preferable to have interviewed persons who had known Chase prior to age eighteen in the assessment of his adaptive functioning. He testified that members of the forensic team had attempted on several occasions to contact those persons, but that these attempts had been unsuccessful. However, Dr. Macvaugh opined that the failure to conduct interviews did not undermine his opinion. He opined that the information from interviews performed by Dr. Reschly lacked sufficient convergence to conclude that Chase had significant adaptive behavior deficits. Further, he opined that Dr. Reschly had used his own personal and moral judgment about what was normal rather than relying on nationally accepted standards. ¶49. Dr. Macvaugh opined that Chase did not exhibit significant deficits in any domain of adaptive functioning. Dr. Macvaugh found that Chase’s academic history, performance on the WRAT-R, and average performance on the Wechsler Memory Scale were inconsistent with the academic and conceptual skills of a person with intellectual disability. He found Chase’s social behaviors to be inconsistent with intellectual disability. Dr. Macvaugh concluded from the totality of the information that, although Chase has some intellectual limitations, he is not intellectually disabled under Atkins and Chase. 3. Circuit Court’s Holding 27 ¶50. The circuit court found that Chase had not proved by the preponderance of the evidence that he is intellectually disabled under Atkins and Chase. The trial court discounted Dr. O’Brien’s testing result because he did not administer a test for malingering. The court found that Dr. Reschly had relied on his own personal opinions and moral judgment in concluding that Chase’s behaviors equated with intellectual disability. The circuit court found Dr. Macvaugh’s opinion to be more credible than those of Dr. Reschly.