August 7th, 2012 at 6:27 p.m. is a time that is in the history book as Marvin Wilson was put to death with the lowest I.Q. score at 61.
For years, Wilson's attorneys tried to appeal his death sentence, citing a 2002 Supreme Court Case ruling that says executing a person with an intellectual disability is cruel and unusual punishment.
The threshold for a person who has an intellectual disability is an I.Q. score of a 70.
But prosecutors argued that Wilson was smarter than his score of 61, saying that he was really a street smart criminal.
Psychotherapist Reagan Hollier has spent more than 600 hours administering I.Q. tests. She says the test measures things like problem solving skills, the ability to analyze and the ability to distinguish relationships.
"It is possible to try to give wrong or poor answers to get a lower score. The typical thing in all major test given, there are built in reliability test and validity measures that help prevent that from happening," Hollier said.
But Janna Fulbright with The Spindletop Center in Beaumont says the crime that Wilson was convicted of is uncharacteristic of someone with a low I.Q.
"In fact they're more likely to be exploited, abused, be taken advantage or be a victims of violence," Fulbright said.
Hollier says one particular thing pushes her to believe that Wilson's I.Q. score of 61 is accurate.
"He had low test scores as a child, he's been in special education, he dropped out at the 10th grade. It sounds to me like it's (61) an accurate score of his I.Q.
Hollier says there's something the I.Q. test can't measure, determining if someone is able to tell right from wrong or good from bad.
She also says it's unlikely for a person to purposely score low on a test because administrators will normally make that person retake the test to avoid any mistakes that the administrator may have made.
