Court Opinion

ID: 9474879
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 05:11:36.532795+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:44:23.513966
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
This case is quite different from Muench v. Israel, 715 F.2d 1124 (7th Cir.1983), cert. denied sub nom. Worthing v. Israel, 467 U.S. 1228, 104 S.Ct. 2682, 81 L.Ed.2d 878 (1984), which excluded psychiatric opinion testimony that the defendant in that case suffered from a personality disturbance and thus was incapable of forming the intent necessary to commit the crime charged. Here the issue is the use of standard IQ tests to establish defendant’s intellectual and psycho-educational function level. These tests would have indicated that defendant generally functioned five years below her grade level, had an IQ of 78 and was borderline mentally retarded. Certainly such tests are far more widely recognized as reliable and probative than are the opinions of psychiatrists about the relation of personality disorders to the formation of criminal intent. Because these tests were ordered by the juvenile court and admitted into evidence for the purpose of binding Brown over for trial as an adult (and their competency and relevancy were thus recognized as a matter of state law), they should have been admitted on the subsequent issue of her knowledge of the possible consequences of her actions. See Chambers v. Mississippi, 410 U.S. 284, 294, 93 S.Ct. 1038, 1045, 35 L.Ed.2d 297 (1973); Washington v. Texas, 388 U.S. 14, 17-23, 87 S.Ct. 1920, 1922-25, 18 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1967). Of course, it is a close question whether this evidentiary exclusion amounted to constitutional error that was not harmless. Nonetheless, I would respectfully dissent on this point.