据《science》报道，美国最高法院在3号早上对佛罗里达州杀人犯Freddie Lee Hall是否应该被判处死刑进行审理。争论的核心焦点在于讨论1978年参与并对一名21岁女性实施谋杀的Hall是否具有足够的智力进行犯罪并为此被判处死刑。法庭的最后裁决将会对2002年最高法院提出通过智力缺陷的评估而对被告进行辩护或起诉的规定设定一个全国性的标准。
主张判处Hall死刑的佛罗里达州早在2002年该项规定实施之后，通过了一种严格的评定方案，即将测定智商是否超过70作为是否具有智力缺陷的依据。佛罗里达州发表声明指出，Hall的智商测定超过70，因此有能力进行犯罪并为此负责。但不主张死刑的Hal的律师和包括美国心理学会（APA）在内的多家精神健康组织都反对这项声明，他们认为佛罗里达州所使用的智商测定手段没有考虑到智商测量中的95%可信度的误差范围。如果确实如此，那么Hall将免遭死刑。
由精神障碍的诊断与统计手册（简写为DSM）定义的智力障碍（intellectual disability）是法院衡量罪犯是否有足够智力进行犯罪的标准，但最高大法官Anthony Kennedy对DSM的定义表示“是否有证据显示社会大众对于专业的精神病有实质性的关注”。也有法官表示佛罗里达州此举似乎只保护了智商低于70的人。法官Elena Kagan认为争论的关键在于对智力障碍的界定，而佛罗里达州所使用的智商测试只是一个部分，并不具有概括性，并且佛罗里达州在测量智商之后，并没有提供任何其他的认知能力测验的证据。
有研究者认为，这次庭审也显示出DSM关于智力障碍的定义存在修订的必要性。约翰霍普金斯大学的James Harris教授认为智商测试并不能预测和解释一个人如何处理现实生活中遇到的挑战和问题，并且智商测试被运用在法庭上也是不当的。也是这个原因James Harris率先在DSM关于神经发育障碍的章节里做了修订。Harris表示新的DSM强调的是适应能力（adaptive ability），即对一个人如何应对困难的社会和现实的挑战，而非只是智商。（Science）
原文：
For Death Row Inmate, Survival May Ride on IQ Test's Margin of Error
EMILY UNDERWOOD
3 March 2014 6:45 pm
At 10 a.m. Monday morning, while most of Washington, D.C., lay quietly under a blanket of snow, the U.S. Supreme Court rang withnerve-wracking arguments over the fate of Florida death row inmate Freddie Lee Hall.
The question at hand was whether Hall, who in 1978 helped assault and murder a 21-year-old woman, is intelligent enough to merit the death sentence. The court's decision could set new national standards for assessing the mental capacities of death row inmates. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that executing people who are intellectually disabled qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment, which is unconstitutional, but it left individual states to establish their own means of assessing a defendant's level of impairment.
Since the 2002 ruling, Florida has opted for a strict definition of intellectual disability as having a score of 70 or below on tests that measure a person’s IQ. The state says that Hall's average score puts him above a "bright line" of 70, and therefore makes him eligible to be executed. But Hall's lawyers and mental health organizations, including the American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association, argue that Hall's assessment does not include the standard 5-point margin of error built into the design of the test. If that uncertainty is considered, Hall would not be eligible for the death penalty, they argue.
In anhourlong hearing, justices grilled both Hall's and Florida's representatives over the statistical nuts and bolts of the IQ test and its analysis. Several expressed considerable confusion over what it means to have an intellectual disability (referred to by both lawyers and justices in the court transcript as "mental retardation"), given the phrase’s recent redefinition in the newest edition of theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, orDSM. Justice Anthony Kennedy asked what it means to have an intellectual disability according to theDSMdefinition. Although such a definition means"thatthescholarscan talkaboutit," he asked: "Is … there anyevidencethatsocietyingeneralgivessubstantial deferencetothepsychiatricprofessioninthisrespect?"
Other justices seemed to find the use of the IQ test alone problematic. "[T]heultimate determinationhereiswhethersomebodyismentally retarded;andtheIQtestisjustapartofthat," noted Justice Elena Kagan. "It's apartofoneprongofthatultimatedetermination." In considering Florida's approach, she and other justices homed in on the fact that once a defendant received a test score above 70, the state does not allow them to submit other evidence about their cognitive abilities. "[W]hatyourcutoffdoesisitessentiallysaystheinquiry hastostopthere," Kagan said. After a long line of cases demonstrating that "we allow people to make their best case about why they're not eligible for the death penalty," the Florida cutoff "stops that in its tracks," she said.
The court has until early summer to issue a decision.
One researcher, however, saysHallv.Floridademonstrates why theDSM’s definition of intellectual disability needed to be revised. Too often, says James Harris, a professor of neurodevelopmental psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, an IQ score can't predict or explain how a person copes with real-life challenges and social situations and is used inappropriately in court. That was one reason Harris spearheaded the recent changes in theDSM’s chapter on neurodevelopmental disorders and served as a consultant to Lee’s lawyers. The new DSM, Harris says, emphasizes "adaptive ability"—how a person responds to difficult social and practical challenges—and not just IQ.
The hearing went "pretty much as I expected," Lee Kovarsky of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in Baltimore tellsScienceInsider. He represented Marvin Wilson, who had an IQ of 61, before he was executed for murder in Texas in 2012. Kovarsky says that although he and other advocates are hoping the court uses the case as an opportunity to issue a broad ruling on mental health and the death penalty, he says the justices appeared to take a narrower approach, focusing on the mechanics of the 70-and-below IQ rule.The court “wants tohave its cake and eat it, too," he says. It "wants to say there's a bar" of mental function below which you cannot execute, but "it doesn't want to have to deal with the corollary, which is to define what mental retardation is."
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