Hamm v. Smith · ¶89

Smith would go to his hearing armed with new decisions of this Court. In Hall v. Florida, 572 U. S. 701 (2014), this Court acknowledged that States can require defendants to show an IQ of 70 or below in order to establish that they are mentally retarded, but held that States must in some manner account for the test's standard error range. States may, “consistently with Atkins,” define mental retardation to require an IQ of “70 points” or below if they consider “the IQ test's standard error of measurement.” Id., at 711–712. Under Florida's test, as the Court understood it, a prisoner with a single IQ score of 71 whose error range included 70 would be conclusively not mentally retarded even if “other evidence” suggested that his “true IQ” was in fact 70 or below. Id., at 712, 713. The Court thought that this “strict IQ test score cutoff of 70” was impermissible because it “ignores the…

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