Opinion ID: 2796228
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Conceptual skills

Text: ¶21. Dr. Reschly stated that “poor and failing school performance prior to age 18 is a significant indicator of significant limitations in the conceptual skills domain.” He identified a downward trend in Chase’s grades from first to tenth grade. Chase’s school records show that he performed above average from the first through fourth grades, showed some decline in the fifth grade, and began performing below average in the sixth grade. He repeated the tenth grade and dropped out of school before completing his second year in tenth grade. Dr. Reschly stated that this downward trend in grades is “frequently seen with persons with mental retardation due to the increasingly abstract nature of the school curriculum and academic demands.” 14 ¶22. Chase’s ninth-grade science teacher, Ida Minor, his civics teacher, Foster Topp, and his sister-in-law, Sita Johnson, all said that they saw Chase daily and that he had been very slow to learn and to apply abstract information. Topp said Chase was among the lowest students in his class. Chase’s middle-school girlfriend, Sandra Adams, and Shirley Norrells, the mother of Chase’s high-school girlfriend, Deborah Norrells, said that Chase was exceptionally slow and needed assistance with his homework. According to Dr. Reschly’s investigation, Hazlehurst Public Schools did not have special education services during the period that Chase was in school from 1975 to 1985. ¶23. Dr. Reschly found that Chase had language deficits. He found from his interview with Chase that he “produced verbal language at a very high rate, but frequently was repetitive, rambling, directionless, and without clear purpose.” He opined that Chase frequently did not understand his own statements, could not organize his thoughts logically, and jumped from one topic to another in the same sentence. Dr. Reschly provided several examples of these sentences, including, “My sister, you gotta catch her, she works all the time, like a kangaroo,” “One of my teachers called my mother, she said she was pleased with my progress in school but didn’t like the girl,” and, asked what he learned in the Job Corps, Chase stated “welding . . . I started in culinary arts and business administration but once again, chasing girls, got lured into welding.” Dr. Reschly found these and other statements “either illogical or patently untrue.” He also found that Chase did not understand his culpability for the capital murder, which showed abstract thinking deficits. He interviewed Jerome Cleveland, who had played football with Chase. Cleveland said that, while Chase was a fast and successful football 15 player, he had been too intellectually slow to follow the plays. ¶24. Dr. Reschly noted that several persons he interviewed said that Chase often told “wildly improbable” stories and often misunderstood normal conversations. Dr. Reschly found Chase’s statement that he had been expelled from school for having sex on campus to be untrue because Minor said that had never happened and if it had, the teachers would have known. Dr. Reschly also found Chase’s statement that, at age twelve, while trying to dunk a basketball, he had hit his head on the basketball rim so hard he had passed out, to be untrue because it was implausible. He stated that Chase also gave incredible explanations for leaving employment, such as a fear of snakes, intolerance of cold weather, excessive heat, and a sexual liaison. Dr. Reschly stated that his interviews indicated that the real reason Chase had left these jobs was his incompetence, and Chase’s incredible explanations were an attempt to pass as normal, which is indicative of intellectual disability. ¶25. Addressing reading and writing skills, Dr. Reschly found that Chase had scored in the twentieth percentile on several achievement tests administered during his childhood and adult years. He opined that these scores rendered him functionally literate, but that they conflicted with the observations of those around Chase. Dr. Reschly said that several observers claimed Chase could not do his own homework and could not read well enough to understand simple directions, such as those on a box of macaroni and cheese. Nonetheless, Dr. Reschly found that “Chase has a relative strength, for a person with mental retardation, in reading and writing.” On cross-examination, he stated that Chase’s reading and writing skills were not at the level typically found with intellectual disability. But he stated that Chase’s functional 16 literacy does not rule out intellectual disability, and that persons with intellectual disability “are expected to have strengths and weaknesses.” ¶26. Dr. Reschly also found Chase deficient in money, time, and number concepts. Chase’s mother said that Chase did not understand money. Johnson, who knew him from ages twelve through fourteen, said that he did not understand money and could not tell time accurately. Dr. Reschly noted Chase’s statement in his interview that he did not trust banks with his money. Dr. Reschly stated that Chase could not understand the seven-percent sales tax. He opined that Chase’s difficulty telling time contributed to his chronic lateness and missed appointments in middle and high school.