Court Opinion

ID: 9668965
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 02:34:29.266637+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:15:50.665871
License: Public Domain

*385KELLER, Justice,
dissenting.
Although I agree with most of the majority opinion, I do not believe that a defendant can waive a claim of mental retardation because the State is constitutionally prohibited from executing mentally retarded individuals. I also do not believe that trial courts are limited to a bright-line rule of an intelligence quotient (IQ) test score at or below 70 when determining whether an individual is mentally retarded, nor do I believe that Appellant’s evidence was insufficient to warrant a hearing. Thus, I write separately.
In Atkins v. Virginia,1 the U.S. Supreme Court exempted all condemned mentally retarded offenders from the death penalty by holding that the execution of mentally retarded offenders constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. The majority opinion, however, claims that because Kentucky provides a statutory mechanism for raising the issue of mental retardation before trial, and Appellant failed to utilize that mechanism even though it had been in effect all of five months before his trial, Appellant has waived any Eighth Amendment mental retardation claim. This clearly conflicts with the holding in Atkins that the “Constitution ‘places a substantive restriction on the State’s power to take the life’ of a mentally retarded offender.”2 Atkins cited Kentucky’s statutory scheme, not necessarily with approval, but as evidence of the emerging national consensus against the execution of the mentally retarded. By then holding that the Eighth Amendment contained a “substantive restriction” against such executions, the Supreme Court raised the bar of protection above that which had been provided in the various mental retardation statutes in existence at the time. This is, in fact, part of the argument that Justice Scalia raised in his dissent in Atkins, i.e., that the majority’s opinion went (1) further than any actually-existing national consensus (given that only 47% of death penalty States at the time had statutes that made mental retardation a bar to execution versus a mitigating factor) and (2) further than the “consensus” that existed even among that 47% of death penalty States.3 Yet we are bound by the majority opinion, which, in effect, recognized that the emerging national consensus against allowing the execution of mentally retarded defendants meant that the Eighth Amendment contained a categorical bar against the execution of the mentally retarded. In other words, what had formerly been only a statutory procedural right in some States, including Kentucky, before Atkins has now been raised to the level of a substantive constitutional prohibition applicable to all fifty States.
Thus, the mere fact that Kentucky’s statutes provided (and still provide) a pretrial means to challenge the applicability of the death penalty when the defendant may be mentally retarded is not enough to protect the interest recognized in Atkins. As the Supreme Court noted in a similar case *386involving the execution of an insane person, “Once a substantive right or restriction is recognized in the Constitution, ... its enforcement is in no way confined to the rudimentary process deemed adequate in ages past.”4 And as the concurring fifth vote in that case noted, “the Eighth Amendment claim at issue can arise only after the prisoner has been validly convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death.”5 Furthermore, “[s]ociety’s independent stake in enforcement of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment cannot be overridden by a defendant’s purported waiver.”6
This makes sense in light of the majority of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. For example, the Supreme Court has decided that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the State from taking the life of-an offender fifteen years of age or less,7 and Kentucky has statutorily enacted this constitutional proscription.8 And more recently, the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment also prohibits the imposition of the death penalty for sixteen and seventeen year olds.9 If the issue of an offender’s age had not been presented or addressed previously by the- trial court, no one, at least hopefully no one, would seriously argue that the issue was waived and could not be presented later if evidence, or a reasonable inference from the evidence, became available that showed that the offender was less than sixteen at the time of the offense.
Ultimately, while pretrial measures are laudable, they alone are not sufficient to protect the substantive right implicit in the Eighth Amendment and recognized in Atkins. Because there is, at least, some indicia of mental retardation, no hearing has been held on this matter, and a constitutional claim of such magnitude is involved, it is also unthinkable that we would assume a waiver and thus violate the precept that “[w]e cannot presume a waiver ... from a silent record.”10 Furthermore, to say that such a claim is waivable by default not only runs afoul of the Eighth Amendment but also conflicts with KRS 582.075, which provides that all death penalties are reviewable by this Court. Thus, despite Appellant’s failure to avail himself of the pretrial procedures described in KRS 532.130-.140, and because the State may not execute him if he is mentally retarded, we cannot deprive him of the opportunity to be heard now on his mental retardation claim.11
*387Though the majority claims that Appellant waived his Eighth Amendment claim, it appears to back away from this harsh default rule by citing to Coleman v. Thompson, which held that review of procedurally defaulted constitutional claims can be reviewed where “the prisoner can ... demonstrate that failure to consider the claims will result in a fundamental miscarriage of justice.”12 The majority opinion then admits that if Appellant could prove that he is mentally retarded, he would, in effect, show “actual innocence,” to wit, “that some other condition of eligibility had not been met,”13 at least with regard to the availability of the death penalty. But the majority opinion avoids this issue by finding that Appellant has not made a prima facie showing sufficient to create doubt as to whether he is mentally retarded.
While I agree that Appellant must at least make a prima facie showing that he is mentally retarded before he is entitled to a hearing, I disagree with the majority’s finding that he has not made a prima facie showing because the evidence presented to the trial court, although slight, was sufficient to create a doubt as to his mental condition. There was some evidence of substantial deficits in adaptive behavior and of subaverage mental functioning (i.e., an IQ of less than 70). Appellant has also produced some evidence that both circumstances manifested during the developmental period, i.e., before he became an adult.
The majority opinion focuses on Appellant’s IQ, stating that there is no evidence in the record of an IQ test score of 74 (as claimed by Appellant) because the score in question is an 84. The following is a scanned reproduction of the section of Appellant’s school records, as included in the Appellate record, listing the IQ test score in question:
[[Image here]]
On further examination, this test score is handwritten and appeal’s to include a “7” superimposed over an “8.” The majority opinion does not even acknowledge this obvious ambiguity, choosing instead to make the factual finding that the IQ score in question is an 84, i.e., an implicit finding that the questionable number in the image above is an “8” rather than a “7.” But this factual ambiguity is not for us, as an appellate court, to decide. Such factual findings are reserved for the trial court. That one handwritten number appears to be superimposed over the other presented the trial court with a credible question of fact as to whether Appellant had received a score of 74 on the IQ test in question, but the trial court did not make the requisite finding, one way or the other. The trial court should now be tasked with resolving this ambiguity.
This then raises my final point of disagreement with the majority: If the IQ test score in question is a 74, then Appellant’s actual IQ could have fallen into the below-70 region contemplated by both Atkins and Kentucky’s statutes. The majority finds that the General Assembly’s use of an IQ of 70 as part of the definition of mental retardation creates a bright-line test that does not admit the possibility of applying a margin of error. First, this presupposes that our statutory scheme, *388which allows only for a pretrial challenge, is the only means of pursuing an Eighth Amendment mental retardation claim. As discussed above, I disagree with this supposition. Because the General Assembly has not supplied a procedure for challenging a death-penalty sentence on the basis of mental retardation after trial, it has failed to provide a sufficient statutory framework, even though Atkins indicates that the States may supply their own definitions of “mental retardation.”
But even assuming that the current statutory definition is applicable to post-trial proceedings, it is not clear that-the General Assembly intended an IQ test score of 70 or below to be a bright-line cutoff. Notice that the General Assembly did not mention the results of an IQ test score in defining mental retardation; instead, it stated that “significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning,” one of the requirements for a finding of mental retardation, “is defined as an intelligence quotient (I.Q.) of seventy (70) or below.”14 A score on an IQ test, however, is merely evidence of a person’s actual IQ. To claim that the judge is bound to a mechanical process of determining whether a given IQ test score is 70 or below reduces the judge to a mere administrator comparing numbers on a roll. But the judge is charged with judging, that is, with making decisions and, where necessary, finding facts. To do this, the judge must consider evidence. That evidence might come in the form of an IQ test score, but it might also come in the form of expert testimony as to the margin of error of a given testing procedure or as to the so-called “Flynn effect.” Kentucky’s statutory scheme includes no limitations on the types of evidence that a judge can consider in making a mental retardation determination, nor should it.
The record in this case includes evidence of a possible five-point margin of error in the testing procedures used to test Appellant’s IQ and evidence of a possible three-point error from the Flynn effect. When these errors are combined with the ambiguity discussed above, it is possible that Appellant’s IQ is well below 70.- And though IQ is only one of several factors in determining whether a given defendant is mentally retarded, this evidence, when combined with the other evidence in the record of Appellant’s alleged “deficits in adaptive behavior,” creates sufficient doubt to warrant a hearing.
Furthermore, it is obvious that the trial judge denied Appellant’s motion for a hearing solely because, as she opined, she thought mental retardation was only a matter of mitigation, which is clearly contrary to the holding in Atkins and the purpose of KRS 532.130-.140. Thus, the trial judge never determined whether the IQ test score on which Appellant relies was a “74,” as it appears to me, or an “84,” as implicitly found by the majority. In fact, she did not even determine whether the evidence overall was sufficient to warrant an evidentiary hearing. The majority opinion, however, has inappropriately made a finding in this regard. For this reason alone, the case should be remanded to the trial court. Accordingly, I would remand the case to the trial court for its proper consideration of Appellant’s motion.
GRAVES, J., joins this dissenting opinion.

. Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 321, 122 S.Ct. 2242, 2252, 153 L.Ed.2d 335 (2002).

. Atkins, 536 U.S. at 321, 122 S.Ct. at 2252 (citing Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 405, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 2599, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986)) (emphasis added); see also Gilmore v. Utah, 429 U.S. 1012, 1019, 97 S.Ct. 436, 440, 50 L.Ed.2d 632 (1976) (Marshall, J., dissenting) ("I believe that the Eighth Amendment not only protects the right of individuals not to be victims of cruel and unusual punishment, but that it also expresses a fundamental interest of society in ensuring that state authority is not used to administer barbaric punishments.”).

.Atkins, 536 U.S. at 341-48, 122 S.Ct. at 2262-65 (Scalia, J., dissenting).

. Ford v. Wainwright, 477 U.S. 399, 410, 106 S.Ct. 2595, 2602, 91 L.Ed.2d 335 (1986) (plurality opinion).

. Id. at 425, 106 S.Ct. at 2609-10 (Powell, J., concurring) (emphasis added).

. Lenhard v. Wolff, 444 U.S. 807, 811, 100 S.Ct. 29, 30-31, 62 L.Ed.2d 20 (1979) (Marshall, J., dissenting); see also Gilmore, 429 U.S. at 1018, 97 S.Ct. at 439-40 (White, J., dissenting) ("I believe, however, that the consent of a convicted defendant in a criminal case does not privilege a State to impose a punishment otherwise forbidden by the Eighth Amendment.”).

. Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815, 108 S.Ct. 2687, 101 L.Ed.2d 702 (1988).

. KRS 640.040(1).

. Roper v. Simmons,- U.S. -, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1, 2005 WL 464890 (2005).

. Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 243, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1712, 23 L.Ed.2d 274 (1969).

. See also United States v. Cota-Corrales, No. 00-10184, 243 F.3d 550 (Table), 2000 WL 1808108 at *1 (9th Cir.2000) (unpublished opinion) ("Thus, we have addressed the merits of an Eighth Amendment claim notwithstanding an appeal waiver. See United States v. Aguilar-Muniz, 156 F.3d 974, 978 (9th Cir.1998).”); In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 33 F.3d 1060, 1062 (9th Cir.1994) ("The time to raise the issue of an Eighth Amendment violation of his right to be free from excessive fines is after the imposition of such a fine.”).

. Coleman v. Thompson, 501 U.S. 722, 750, 111 S.Ct. 2546, 2565 (1991).

. Sawyer v. Whitley, 505 U.S. 333, 345, 112 S.Ct. 2514, 2522, 120 L.Ed.2d 269 (1992).

. KRS 532.130(2).