capital punishment

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."'

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders. Now the Alabama Supreme Court has set out a 14-factor test that judges can use to decide if juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life with or without the possiblity of parole. The Sentencing Law and Policy Blog noted that the Alabama Supreme Court found an opinon from the Pennsylvania Superior Court, Commonwealth v. Knox, helpful in setting out the 14 factors, which include the juvenile's mental-health hisotry, the juvenile's emotional maturity and development and "any other relevant factor related to the juvenile's youth."