Washington, May 27 (EFE).- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that, besides IQ, other parameters must be taken into account to determine whether a convict is mentally disabled when making decisions about eligibility for execution.
By a 5-4 vote, the justices struck down a Florida law barring the classification of anyone with an IQ of 70 or above as mentally disabled.
The high court demands that Florida apply an error margin to its IQ exams, as stipulated by medical standards, and thus make the requirements stricter for carrying out executions.
"Florida's rule disregards established medical practice in two interrelated ways: It takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant's intellectual capacity, when experts would consider other evidence; and it relies on a purportedly scientific measurement of a defendant's abilities, while refusing to recognize that measurement's inherent imprecision," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.
The case in question, Hall v. Florida, involves the death sentence handed down against Freddie Hall for the 1978 murder of Karol Hurst, a 21-year-old woman who was pregnant when she was killed.
Hall was sentenced to death and in 1999 he scored between 71 and 80 on IQ tests, although later new exams found him to have an IQ of between 71 and 75.
The Supreme Court decided in 2002 in another case that it is unconstitutional to execute a person who is mentally disabled.
Although the death sentence is on the books in more than 30 states, the number of executions in the country has been falling gradually in recent years, from a high of 98 in 1999 to 38 in 2013, according to figures provided by the Death Penalty Information Center.
