Supreme Court Heightens Standard to Execute Death Row Prisoners with Intellectual Disabilities

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Florida's policy of making convicted murders eligible for execution if their IQ tests are 70 or above, USA Today reports. Florida must apply a margin of error to IQ tests administered to Freddie Lee Hall, convicted of killing two people in 1978. Justice Anthony Kenndey, author of the majority opinion, said: "'Florida's law contravenes our nation's commitment to dignity and its duty to teach human decency as the mark of a civilized world. The states are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects."'