Cal. Supreme Court Upholds Trial Court Finding Of Mental Retardation In Capital Case

In a unanimous opinion, the California Supreme Court today upheld a trial court's finding that a capital defendant was mentally retarded and therefore categorically excluded from the death penalty under Atkins.

California Penal Code section 1376 defines "mentally retarded" as "the condition of significantly subaverage general intellectual functioning existing concurrently with deficits in adaptive behavior and manifested before the age of 18." At a pre-trial evidentiary hearing held to determine whether the defendant was mentally retarded, the trial court heard testimony from two defense experts and one prosecution expert. The defense experts acknowledged that the defendant's full scale IQ scores - which ranged from 77 to 92 - were greater than 70, which is generally understood to lie at or near the border between low average intelligence and mild mental retardation. Nevertheless, the defense experts relied heavily on the defendant's verbal IQ score - one component of the full scale IQ score - to conclude that appellant was indeed mentally retarded. The trial court was persuaded by the defense evidence and barred the prosecution from seeking the death penalty.

Divsion Six of California's Second District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court on the ground that it was legal error for the trial court not to give primary consideration to the defendant's full scale IQ scores.

The Supreme Court reversed, ruling that the Court of Appeal erred in purporting to resolve a factual question - the best scientific measure of intellectual functioning - as a matter of law. According to the Supreme Court, Penal Code section 1367 does not dictate primary reliance on the full scale IQ score. Of significance to the Supreme Court was the fact that Penal Code section 1367 makes no reference to one or another clinical test of intelligence, any more than it refers to a particular score as a cutoff point for mental retardation.

In eschewing the rigid rule adopted by the Court of Appeal and favored by the prosecution, the Supreme Court made it clear that mental retardation is a question of fact that "must be based on all relevant evidence." With successful challenges to the imposition of the death penalty few and far between, this decision is an important one that should encourage defense attorneys representing capital defendants with marginal IQ scores to reconsider requesting an Atkins hearing.

In addition to the primary substantive holding of this case, the Supreme Court also concluded that a pre-trial finding of mental retardation is an order from which the prosecution may appeal.

The unanimous opinion was authored by Justice Kathryn M. Werdegar.

People v. Superior Court (Vidal), no. S134901 (Cal. Supreme Ct., filed 4/12/07)