Ethnic adjustment abuses in forensic assessment of intellectual abilities.

Abstract

Within the past few years, courts have been more open to accepting evidence of psychological research. For instance, in 2002, the United States Supreme Court, citing an American Psychological Association (APA) Amicus brief, declared that the execution of mentally retarded individuals was unconstitutional because it violated the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Between 2005 and 2012, the Supreme Court accepted APA briefs describing the limitations in neural development of adolescents and its relevance to sentencing. In 2013, the Court ruled that in assessing an individual's intelligence there must be a consideration of the standard error of measurement. All of this suggested a progressive movement in judicial recognition of psychological research. However, during the same time, many courts were allowing and accepting testimony in capital sentencing cases of so-called ethnic adjustment. Some psychologists were testifying that defendants who were from ethnic minority groups had IQ scores that were suppressed and that therefore their scores had to be "adjusted" upward to compensate for the suppression. However, these adjustments were based purely on clinical judgment and did not reflect any empirical studies. As a result, several of these individuals who had their IQ scores adjusted have been executed. This article will describe the case law surrounding this concept, ethical issues that it raises, and how a practitioner can provide useful consultation to attorneys who represent defendants in such cases. Clinical Impact StatementThis article reviews the misuse of intellectual assessment in the courtroom when courts allow testimony about ethnic adjustment of I.Q. scores of ethnic minorities. Through a review of case law, ethical standards, and specialty guidelines, this article will be of assistance to psychologists when they consult with attorneys surrounding this issue.

Intellectual, Developmental, and Physical Disabilities in U.S. Legal Settings: A Scoping Review

“…One issue relates to cases in which there are multiple IQ scores available, some of which may be below the generally accepted cutoff score of 70 on a standardized IQ test, and some of which are not (Appelbaum, 2009). Related to this issue are discussions about the psychometric properties of IQ tests, including the role of measurement error and how courts should take such error into consideration (Guyer and Fluent, 2014); adjustment for the Flynn effect, which "refers to the finding that the general population's average IQ test scores have increased over the past several decades" (Hagan, Drogin, and Guilmette, 2008, p. 619); and "ethnic adjustments" to IQ scores-i.e., demographically adjusting IQ scores based on normative data, which typically results in adding points to the IQ scores of individuals from marginalized racial and ethnic groups-which the literature suggested was an ethical violation (Perlin, 2016;Sanger, 2015;Shapiro et al, 2019). A related issue is the use of intellectual assessments for racial groups that were underrepresented in the development and validation of the tests (e.g., Native Americans; Callahan, 2007).…”