Supreme Court Tells Alabama to Reconsider the Factors It Has Used to Determine Intellectual Disability

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated the Alabama state courts’ rejection of a prisoner’s claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability, and directed the state to reconsider his claim in light of the Court’s recent decision in Moore v. Texas requiring states to employ scientifically accepted standards in determining whether a death-row prisoner is intellectually disabled. On May 1, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the case of Taurus Carroll, and vacated the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals’ decision in his case after Carroll’s lawyer argued that the March 28 decision in Moore established that Alabama had unconstitutionally deviated from accepted methods of determining intellectual disability. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that defendants who are found to have intellectual disability—then known as mental retardation—cannot be executed. The ruling left states with discretion in establishing procedures for determining which defendants have intellectual disability. In Moore, however, the Court reiterated that this discretion is not “unfettered” and that a state’s intellectually disability determination must be “informed by the medical community’s diagnostic framework.” The Court struck down Texas’ use of an unscientific set of lay stereotypes, known as the “Briseño factors,” that Texas had used to determine whether Moore had deficits in adaptive functioning characteristic of intellectual disability. The Court said that, “[i]n concluding that Moore did not suffer significant adaptive deficits, the [Texas courts] overemphasized Moore’s perceived adaptive strengths,” but “the medical community focuses the adaptive-functioning inquiry on adaptive deficits.” In Carroll’s case, the Alabama courts had considered Mr. Carroll’s supposed adaptive strengths—that he had passed a GED exam and successfully held down a job in the prison kitchen—as proof that he was not intellectually disabled. Carroll’s attorney argued that, “As in Moore, the consideration below of Mr. Carroll’s adaptive functioning ‘deviate[s] from prevailing clinical standards, by ‘overemphasiz[ing] Mr. [Carroll]’s perceived adaptive strengths.” He also argued that Alabama had unconstitutionally employed a strict IQ cutoff score, while at the same time inflating Carroll’s IQ score by refusing to apply scientifically established factors that adjust for limitations in IQ testing. With the Supreme Court’s ruling in Carroll’s case, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals must now determine how Moore affects Alabama’s methods of determining intellectual disability. John Palombi, a lawyer with the Federal Defenders for the Middle District of Alabama, said he was “pleased” with the Court’s decision. “This will require Alabama courts to follow scientific principles when making the life or death decision of whether someone charged with capital murder is intellectually disabled,” he said.

(C. Geidner, “Who Is Intellectually Disabled? Supreme Court Orders Alabama To Reconsider Death-Row Case,” BuzzFeed News, May 2, 2017.) See Intellectual Disability and U.S. Supreme Court. Read Mr. Carroll’s Petition for Writ of Certiorari, Alabama’s Brief in Opposition, and Mr. Carroll’s Reply Brief in Support of Petition for Writ of Certiorari.