By Izzy Wollfarth | LSU Manship School News Service
BATON ROUGE – A House bill that would require people convicted in death-penalty cases to submit evidence of an IQ below 75 to claim an intellectual disability defense advanced in a committee last week after vigorous debate.
House Bill 1107 defines “intellectually disabled” as a condition that occurred before the age of 18 that impaired and continues to impair a person’s behavior and intellectual functioning. In the bill, the definition of disability aligns with an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 75 or below.
Claims of intellectual disability are restricted to death-penalty cases. The bill requires a person found guilty in a capital case to provide clear and convincing evidence of an intellectual disability, including written expert reports. If enough evidence supports the claim, a person on death row could have his or her sentence changed to life in prison.
The bill also stipulates that a petitioner’s IQ test score above 75 would provide irrefutable evidence that a person does not have an intellectual disability, keeping the death-row sentence intact.
The bill passed 8-3 Thursday in the House Administration of Criminal Justice Committee.
The American Psychiatric Association defines intellectual disability as neurodevelopmental conditions that affect a person in two areas: cognitive functioning, such as learning, problem-solving and judgment, and adaptive functioning, such as communication skills and social participation.
Intellectual disability affects about 1% of the population, the psychiatric association says. A full-scale IQ score of around 70 to 75 indicates a significant limitation in intellectual functioning.
The Louisiana attorney general’s office and Rep. Michael Melerine, R-Shreveport, worked together on the bill and characterized the potential law as merely procedural in that it seeks to codify U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
Zack Faircloth, principal deputy solicitor general for Louisiana, who testified on behalf of the bill, discussed his experience with intellectual-disability cases that last for years due to the absence of clear procedure.
The bill, Faircloth said, would establish “clear rules” on what intellectual disability is.
“We aren’t guessing about what it is and what people have to prove in each individual case,” Faircloth said. “It’s restored legislative control over this. This shouldn’t be ad-hoc judicial policy making.”
Following the bill’s advancement, The ARC of Louisiana, an organization that advocates for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, posted on its Facebook page: “Well things did not go as we wanted today in House Criminal Justice.”
Overarching criticisms were that the bill narrowly defines “intellectual disability” by relying on a single IQ test score as the deciding factor between life and death.
“If we get this wrong, someone doesn’t lose their right, they lose their life,” said Dr. Ashley Volion, a policy analyst for Disability Rights Louisiana.
Jeanna Wheat, co-chair of the legislative committee for the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, explained that the bill does not address timelines for cases and instead attempts to define intellectual disability.
“As this bill is written, it is currently unconstitutional,” Wheat said.
Wheat referred to the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which said executing individuals with intellectual disabilities is “cruel and unusual punishment” and therefore unconstitutional.
Under Atkins, all states are banned from executing a person with intellectual disabilities, but the definition of “intellectual disability” and the procedure for imposing the death penalty are at the digression of individual states.
Two more recent cases in Florida and Texas argued before the U.S. Supreme Court were shot down because they defined intellectual disability too rigidly in a way that contradicted modern medical and clinical standards.
Dr. Charlotte Hollman, a board-certified pediatric neurologist, said the current bill contradicts the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a guide for clinicians and researchers published by the American Psychiatric Association.
The DSM-5 states that an intellectually disabled diagnosis requires a comprehensive assessment that does not rely solely on IQ test scores. Instead, intelligence is studied across three domains: conceptually, socially and practically.
The most recent edition of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disability (AAIDD) manual also presents updated research that a person’s development last into his or her 20s.
“HB 1107 is the antithesis of justice and fairness in our criminal system,” Wheat said.
Melerine responded to criticisms with a personal account of a family member with an intellectual disability.
“I want to make everybody clear,” he said. “I would not do something that would potentially put someone like my uncle in a situation where they would be put to death.”