Filed July 20, 2015
Petitioner’s argument inappropriately “takes an IQ score as final and conclusive evidence of a defendant’s intellectual capacity, whenexpertsin the field would consider other evidence.” (Hall, supra, 134 S.Ct. at p. 1995.) A person’s IQ score aloneis neversufficient to determine mental retardation.
Filed May 15, 2018
The consensus of medical professionals is also relevant to Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. (See Hall, supra, 134 S.Ct. at p. 2000.) Setting 18 years as the line for who is mature enough for the death penalty, regardless of other factors affecting a person’s neurodevelopment, makes little scientific sense.
Filed September 22, 2016
115 Significantly, in evaluating this evidentiary rule under the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court applied the identical approachit had employed in Roper-- looking to see if this rule was consistent with a national consensus. (134 S.Ct. at pp. 1996-1998.) Because the Florida evidentiary rule wasnot consistent with the national consensus,it violated the Eighth Amendment.
Filed October 17, 2017
See, e.g., People v. Thomas, 8 N.E.3d 308 (N.Y. 2014); Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010). These briefs have been cited frequently by courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. See, e.g., Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986, 1994-1995, 2000-2001 (2014); Panetti v. Quarterman, 551 U.S. 930, 962 (2007); Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 316 n.21 (2002). Several of APA’s amicus briefs addressed eyewitness-identification issues.
Filed September 5, 2014
As the Supreme Court reaffirmed this term: “States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects.” Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986, 2001 (2014). The Constitution “undoubtedly imposes constraints on the State’s power to control the selection of one’s spouse.”