Opinion ID: 852374
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: B-1(a

Text: As for the intellectual functioning prong, defense expert Dr. Dennis Olvera administered the WAIS-III IQ test to Pruitt before trial. Dr. Olvera did not testify during trial, but both sides elicited testimony about Pruitt's WAIS-III test results from court-appointed mental retardation expert Dr. George Schmedlen. Dr. Schmedlen testified on direct examination that Pruitt's IQ score of 76 is in the borderline range of intellectual functioning for an individual with mental retardation but concluded that the score was above the generally accepted standard for what would be classified as significantly subaverage intellectual functioning. (Trial Tr. 617-19.) Trial counsel probed this conclusion on cross examination, asking Dr. Schmedlen whether his opinion would be affected [a]ssuming that the result of Dr. Olvera's WAIS is artificially high such that the real score is within two standard deviations of 70 [the threshold score for classification as mental retarded]? Id. at 678. Dr. Schmedlen conceded that it might affect his conclusion. See id. at 679. Trial counsel then questioned defense expert Dr. Golden on Pruitt's WAIS-III results. Dr. Golden testified that his review of Pruitt's Department of Correction records showed that Pruitt was on the antipsychotic medication Trilafon at the time that he took Dr. Olvera's WAIS-III IQ test. Id. at 1501. He testified that if given the appropriate antipsychotic drug, the IQ scores of those with psychiatric disorders may go up significantly because of improvements in attention and focusing. Id. at 1500. Dr. Golden then administered the Stanford-Binet IQ test to Pruitt while he was not on any antipsychotic medication. Id. at 1501-02. Pruitt scored an overall IQ of 65, from which Dr. Golden concluded that Pruitt was mentally retarded. Id. at 1504, 1507. Dr. Golden reinforced his conclusion by testifying that after considering the totality of the IQ tests ... and the academic achievement tests ... and all of the rest of the materials, his opinion was that Pruitt's IQ falls in the range of mental retardation. Id. at 1553-54. Our review of the record shows that the following evidence regarding the intellectual functioning prong of mental retardation was presented at the PCR hearing. Like Dr. Golden, State's expert witness Dr. Denis Keyes testified that he administered the Stanford-Binet IQ test to Pruitt and Pruitt scored somewhere between 61 and 69 as a full scale. (PCR Tr. 117.) This score put him within the range of mental retardation. Id. Petitioner's expert witness Dr. Olvera testified that Pruitt scored a full scale IQ of 76 on the WAIS-III test he administered, which was the first administration of an appropriate intelligence test on Pruitt. Id. at 30, 33, 46. This IQ score was significantly higher than Pruitt's scores on other multi-factorial IQ tests. [22] When asked what explained this outlier, Dr. Olvera opined that the only difference was that Pruitt was taking the antipsychotic medication Trilafon when tested by Olvera, and he stopped taking it during subsequent IQ test administrations. Id. at 48. He explained that a number of recent scientific studies have indicated that the use of antipsychotic medication can improve cognition in schizophrenics, id. at 39, allowing them to attain the level of intellectual functioning they are capable of if they did not suffer from schizophrenia. [23] Id. at 51-52. Even though he advised trial counsel that in his professional opinion, Pruitt did not meet the intellectual functioning prong of mental retardation, id. at 50, Dr. Olvera testified that his conclusion had changed after reading the other experts' reports. He agreed with Dr. Keyes that Pruitt was mentally retarded. Id. at 44-45. Also during the PCR hearing, petitioner's expert Dr. Coons, a psychiatrist, diagnosed Pruitt with mild mental retardation even though he acknowledged that he did not consider himself an expert in the field. Id. at 453-54. Dr. Coons also did not do any IQ testing on his own, but relied entirely on the testing of other experts to come to his conclusion. Id. at 453-54, 472. He performed no tests to identify malingering. Id. at 476. Petitioner's expert Dr. Price also diagnosed Pruitt with mild mental retardation. Id. at 704. Like Dr. Coons, he based his conclusion on other experts' testing results, and review of Pruitt's educational records. Id. at 736-37. He also did not administer any tests to identify malingering. Id. at 707.