Court Opinion

ID: 9674929
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:37:26.291121+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:30.264184
License: Public Domain

ON REHEARING
REYNOLDS, Chief Justice.
In his motion for rehearing, appellant, asserting that the record reflects he is a mentally retarded person who comes within the protection of the Texas Mentally Retarded Persons Act, complains that we erroneously concluded he is not a mentally retarded person in overruling his third ground of error. The complaint centers around our refusal to disturb the trial court’s finding from the evidence that appellant was not mentally retarded because, as we wrote, the evidence did not establish appellant’s mental retardation required by the Act for commitment.
Specifically, appellant complains that we failed to give full consideration to the complete definition of a mentally retarded person and to an accurate account of the evidence, particularly disputing our statement that the evidence “included opinions of medical experts who did not find appellant to be subaverage in general intelligence for his age group.” In this regard, appellant argues that since Section 3(6)(b) of the Act provides that “subaverage general intellectual functioning,” which we quoted in the definition of a mentally retarded person, “refers to measured intelligence on standardized psychometric instruments of two or more standard deviations below the age-group mean for the tests used,” and since appellant scored at least two or more standard deviations below his age-group on several of the verbal subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale, we erroneously concluded he was not a mentally retarded person.
In spite of appellant’s allegations, we gave full credit to the statutory definitions and to the evidence in reaching our decision. The evidence was furnished, in the main, by Dr. Wall a clinical psychologist, and by Dr. Shaw, a practicing psychiatrist, the two evidential sources depended upon by appellant to evidence his mental retardation.
Doctor Wall tested appellant by a Wech-sler Adult Intelligence Scale, which, he explained, is “an intelligence test, but it’s a particular kind of intelligence test where different areas of intellectual functioning are measured.” The Wechsler test is composed of two subdivisions: performance and verbal, each of which has subparts. The doctor testified that a standard deviation for the Wechsler test is 15 IQ points below 100, and two standard deviations below the mean would be 30 points from 100, or 70. This test was, so far as the record reveals, the only standard psychometric instrument used recently to measure appellant’s intelligence in order to arrive at an evaluation of his general intellectual functioning.
By Dr. Wall’s testing, appellant did score two standard deviations below the norm on four of the subtests comprising the verbal subdivision; but, appellant’s overall score on all of the subtests of the verbal subdivision amounted to a 72 IQ score which, together with his 95 IQ score on the performance subdivision, computed to an average IQ of 81 on the Weschsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Thus, appellant’s intelligence, measured by this standardized psychometric instrument and not merely by some isolated subparts thereof, did not mark him to be of subaverage general intellectual functioning for his age group. Indeed, the result was confirmed by Dr. Wall’s testimony that appellant’s “average or full scale IQ of 81 does rule out any legal definition of retardation.”
Doctor Wall’s report was available to Dr. Shaw when he conducted a personal interview with appellant. When asked about *791Dr. Wall’s scoring of appellant’s IQ tests, Dr. Shaw stated that although the Wech-sler sometimes is not a valid test of IQ, he would not disagree with what Dr. Wall said in his report. He further testified that based on the data available to him and his interview, he had no doubt that appellant was not of superior intelligence, but probably was dull normal or borderline, which “is not considered by most authorities to be a true mental retardation.” Although Dr. Shaw did not report the employment of a standardized psychometric instrument to measure appellant’s intelligence, he did report that from his interview, “I got no impression of a substantial impairment of intelligence to any degree that would prevent the patient, if he were the actor, from being aware of what he was doing or that it was wrong.”
It was in the light of this evidence that we declined to disturb the trial court’s finding “from the evidence, which included opinions of medical experts who did not find appellant to be subaverage in general intelligence for his age group, that appellant was not mentally retarded.” And it is in the light of this evidence that we adhere to our prior writing. Given the court’s finding, and the absence of the establishment of appellant’s mental retardation required by the Act for commitment, we held, without reaching the question whether the Act’s commitment provisions were available to appellant in this cause, that the trial court did not err in overruling the motion for sentencing pursuant to the Texas Mental Retarded Persons Act. The court’s ruling was the only question before us under appellant’s third ground of error.
Still, appellant submits that we now have a different view of the evidence than we did when we wrote on original submission that
On the other four subtests, which measure judgment, reasoning ability, attention and concentration, the appellant scored more than two standard deviations below the norm, which is an indication of mental retardation.
628 S.W.2d at 851. We see no variance. That language was part of the discussion on the question of appellant’s competency to stand trial, not on the question of his entitlement to be committed under the Texas Mentally Retarded Persons Act. As previously discussed, the subtests were but a part of the measurement of appellant’s intelligence which, in Dr. Wall’s words, “does rule out any legal definition of retardation.”
The other grounds advanced in appellant’s motion for rehearing have been duly considered. We detect nothing therein to require further writing or a different disposition of the appeal on remand.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.