Case Number: 2014-KA-00123-SCT

Judge: James D. Maxwell

Court: IN THE SUPREME COURT OF MISSISSIPPI

Plaintiff's Attorney:

name

Defendant's Attorney:

James W. Craig

Description: In November 1995, eighteen-year-old Scott killed Richard Lee while stealing his car.6
In 1998, he was tried before a Bolivar County jury, which found him guilty of capital murder.
After a separate hearing, the jury sentenced Scott to death.
¶5. Scott appealed. We affirmed Scott’s conviction and death sentence. Scott I, 878 So.
2d 933. In doing so, we rejected Scott’s argument that he was intellectually disabled
and—based on the recently handed-down United States Supreme Court opinion, Atkins v.
Virginia—ineligible for execution.7 See Atkins, 536 U.S. 304, 122 S. Ct. 2242, 153 L. Ed.
2d 335 (holding that imposing the death penalty on intellectually disabled persons violates
the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments). But we acknowledged Scott could be eligible for
a hearing on his intellectual-disability claim if he attached a sufficient affidavit to his
postconviction-relief (PCR) application. Scott I, 878 So. 2d at 948.
II. PCR Application
¶6. Scott timely filed an application for PCR, which we granted in part in 2006. We
remanded to the Bolivar County Circuit Court the single issue of Scott’s alleged intellectual
5 See note 16, infra. 6 More details of the murder and Scott’s related aggravated-assault conviction can be found in Scott v. State, 878 So. 2d 933, 939-42 (Miss. 2004) (Scott I). 7 While Atkins used the term “mentally retarded,” as did this Court when we adopted the Atkins standard, that term has since been replaced by “intellectually disabled.” See Chase v. State, 171 So. 3d 463, 466 n.1 (Miss. 2015) (Chase III). 3
disability. Scott II, 938 So. 2d at 1250.
¶7. In contrast to his direct appeal, we found Scott had provided the necessary affidavit
to entitle him to an Atkins hearing. Id. at 1238. The State conceded the affidavit by Scott’s
expert, Dr. Marc Zimmerman, satisfied the deficiencies we found in Scott I. But the State
took issue with “the findings and methods of Dr. Zimmerman.” Scott II, 938 So. 2d at 1238.
In particular, the State asserted “Dr. Zimmerman failed to administer the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inventory II (MMPI-II),” which at the time was “required prior to
an adjudication on a claim of mental retardation pursuant to Atkins.”8 Id. In response,
“Scott argued that the MMPI-II is not an appropriate test for individuals with mental
retardation,” citing Dr. Zimmerman’s opinion “that the MMPI-II test would be of
‘questionable value’ because Scott is unable to read beyond a third-grade level.” Id. But as
“this Court ha[d] not disregarded the MMPI-II test,” we mandated that, “prior to an
adjudication on the mental retardation issue, Scott must obtain a MMPI-II test.” Id.
¶8. Four months later, however, this Court did disregard the MMPI-II—or at least stopped
making the MMPI-II a mandatory requirement. Lynch, 951 So. 2d at 557. Under the Atkins
guidelines adopted in Chase v. State, 873 So. 2d 1013, 1029 (Miss. 2004),9 this court held
that the defendant’s expert was permitted to perform the MMPI-II “and/or other similar
8 In this Court’s first Atkins case, we held “that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-II (MMPI-II) is to be administered since its associated validity scales make the test best suited to detect malingering.” Foster v. State, 848 So. 2d 172, 175 (Miss. 2003). 9 All references in this opinion simply to “Chase” refer to our 2004 opinion, Chase v. State, 873 So. 2d 1013 (Miss. 2004). Reference to other Chase v. State opinions are distinguished by either “Chase II” or “Chase III.” 4
tests.” Lynch, 951 So. 2d at 556 (quoting Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1029). So in Lynch, we
clarified that “trial courts are free to use any . . . approved tests . . . to determine mental
retardation and/or malingering by a defendant.” Id. at 557.
III. Atkins Hearing
¶9. Scott’s Atkins hearing was finally held over two days in December 2013 and one day
in January 2014.
¶10. For Scott’s Atkins hearing, Dr. Zimmerman appended his 2005 report to address
adaptive functioning. And in 2012, Dr. Zimmerman interviewed six of Scott’s family
members face-to-face, administering retroactive Vineland Surveys. Based on those surveys
and Scott’s school records, Dr. Zimmerman concluded Scott had adaptive-functioning
deficits in at least five areas.
¶11. But Dr. Zimmerman left unaltered the part of his 2005 report in which he concluded
Scott’s similar results on two different IQ tests administered on the same day—a 63 on the
Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-III (WAIS-III) and a 65 on the Kaufman Adolescent and
Adult Intelligence Test (Kaufman)—sufficiently eliminated the possibility that Scott was
malingering.
¶12. This prompted the State to start the hearing with an objection. The State argued Scott
should not be permitted to move forward because he had not complied with this Court’s
specific mandate in Scott II. The State conceded the specific directive to administer the
MMPI-II had been overruled by Lynch. However, it argued Scott’s expert still had to
administer some type of “malingering instrument” before the hearing. According to the
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State, Dr. Zimmerman’s method for ruling out malingering—back-to-back IQ tests on the
same day—would not suffice, because it had not been peer-reviewed or widely accepted in
the forensic-psychology field.
¶13. The trial judge postponed ruling on the State’s motion until after Dr. Zimmerman
testified about his testing procedures. During Dr. Zimmerman’s redirect, Scott’s counsel
presented an article by Dr. Gilbert S. Macvaugh and Dr. Mark D. Cunningham, “Atkins v.
Virginia: Implications and Recommendations for Forensic Practice,” 37 J. Psychiatry & L.
131 (2009). According to the article, “Although several instruments exist that are designed
to assess malingering of memory and cognitive deficits, these instruments lack sufficient
normative data for persons with mental retardation in their standardized samples.”
Consequently, the study suggests that administering these instruments “create[s] the risk of
false positives.” Id. at 172-73. Moreover, the article claims studies investigating the validity
of malingering instruments on the intellectually disabled “have produced mixed results.” Id.
at 173. In Drs. Macvaugh and Cunningham’s opinion, assessing suboptimum effort is
“greatly assisted by the presence of intellectual assessment results that predate the capital
charge. The stability of results from repeated intellectual assessments that are separated by
years . . . is also of inferential benefit.” Id. While they admitted they were “aware of no
longitudinal research investigating this premise,” they opined “it would seem to be a task of
improbable complexity to ‘dial in’ a performance consistent with mild mental retardation on
multiple test administrations separated by years, particularly when different instruments have
been employed.” Id.
6
¶14. Based on this article, the trial judge overruled the State’s objection and accepted Dr.
Zimmerman’s expert testimony that, to a reasonable degree of certainty, Scott met the three
criteria for intellectual disability and was not malingering.
¶15. The judge also overruled the State’s objection to school psychologist Gussie Farris
being tendered as an expert. Farris testified that when Scott was in eighth grade his mother
asked for a comprehensive assessment of Scott. As part of the assessment team, Farris
administered the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) to Scott, who received a
full-scale score of 68. While this score put Scott in the intellectually disabled range, Farris
said she did not classify Scott as “educable mentally retarded” due to the unwritten school
policy not to classify African-American male students like Scott as educable mentally
retarded unless absolutely necessary.10 Because Scott’s scores “could go either
way”—meaning she could classify him as “educable mentally retarded” or “specific learning
disability”—she chose to classify him as the latter. But in her expert opinion, Scott was
mentally retarded.
¶16. In addition to Dr. Zimmerman’s and Farris’s expert testimony, the trial judge heard
from two lay witnesses—Diane Scott, Scott’s mother; and Linda Brasel, Scott’s special
education teacher.
¶17. The State’s expert, Dr. Robert M. Storer, then testified. In contrast to Dr.
10 Farris testified this policy stemmed from the “Mattie T.” litigation—a forty-year class action based on disparate treatment of black special-education students in Mississippi. See S. Herr, Special Education Law and Children with Reading and Other Disabilities, 28 J. Law & Educ. 337, 361 (July 1999)) (unpublished) (noting Mattie T. v. Holladay, DC74-31(S) (N.D. Miss.), resulted in a consent decree “to overhaul Mississippi’s special education system”). 7
Zimmerman, Dr. Storer believed Scott was malingering. Dr. Storer had tested Scott in 2012.
He administered to Scott several malingering tests11 and the WAIS-IV. Dr. Storer concluded
Scott was exaggerating psychological symptoms and had given inconsistent effort. Because
of this, Dr. Storer testified he was unable to evaluate Scott’s true intellectual ability. Dr.
Storer also testified he was unable to conclude Scott had any adaptive-functioning deficits
due to conflicting information from Scott’s family members.
¶18. At the conclusion of the hearing, the judge ruled that Scott had proved by a
preponderance of the evidence that he is intellectually disabled and, thus, under Atkins, could
not be executed. By order, the judge vacated Scott’s death sentence.
IV. State’s Appeal
¶19. The State has appealed the trial judge’s order. The State raises five claims:
1. The trial judge reversibly erred when he denied the State’s objection that Dr. Zimmerman gave no malingering measure as ordered by this Court.
2. The trial judge erred in holding Dr. Zimmerman had administered a valid malingering test.
3. The trial judge erred regarding the testimony of school psychologist Gussie Farris.
4. The trial judge erred in relying on the testimony of Dr. Zimmerman to determine Scott was intellectually disabled.
5. The trial judge’s judgment must be vacated and remanded so that he may issue his own findings of fact and conclusions of law and enter a new judgment on that basis.
11 To test for effort and malingering, Dr. Storer administered the Rey Fifteen Item Memory Test (RMT), the Test of Memory Malingering (TOMM), the Miller Forensic Assessment of Symptoms Test (M-FAST), and the Validity Indicator Profile (VIP). 8
Discussion
I. No Record Evidence
¶20. We begin with the State’s last claim—the trial judge failed to make independent
findings. The State asserts the judgment was not based on the circuit court’s own findings
of facts and conclusions of law but instead reflects an almost-verbatim adoption of Scott’s
proposed findings of facts and conclusions of law.
¶21. This is a serious allegation. As this Court has said, “[t]he ultimate issue of whether
[an Atkins claimant] is, in fact, [intellectually disabled] for purposes of the Eighth
Amendment, is one for the trial judge, who sits as the trier of fact and assesses the totality
of the evidence as well as the credibility of witnesses.” Doss v. State, 19 So. 3d 690, 714
(Miss. 2009). And only when a trial judge’s finding on intellectual disability is “clearly
erroneous” may this Court disturb it. Goodin v. State, 102 So. 3d 1102, 1111 (Miss. 2012).
But how can this Court apply a “clearly erroneous” standard when there is serious doubt as
to whether the trial judge made his own findings on the issue of Scott’s intellectual
disability? In other words, adopting one side’s proposed findings—versus making
independent findings—seriously undermines the trial judge’s role as the fact-and-credibility
finder, as well as this Court’s deferential standard of review. Indeed, in Chase v. State, 112
So. 3d 421, 422 (Miss. 2013) (Chase II), the trial judge’s wholesale adoption of the State’s
proposed findings “rais[ed] concerns”—so much so that this Court specifically mandated the
trial judge “issue his own Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law” on remand.
¶22. But after contending that the trial judge’s adoption of Scott’s proposed findings
9
requires reversal, the State wholly fails to support its contention with record evidence.
Instead, the State attached a copy of Scott’s proposed findings as an exhibit to its brief,
asking us to compare the document with the judge’s order. But as the State is well aware,
the State did not make this document part of the record, and merely attaching something to
a brief does not make it record evidence. And as the State is also well aware, this court is
precluded from delving into matters outside the record. See Hampton v. State, 148 So. 3d
992, 995 (Miss. 2014) (and cases cited therein); Keller v. State, 138 So. 3d 817, 873-74
(Miss. 2014). The State does not explain why it never sought to make Scott’s proposed
findings of facts and conclusions of law a part of the record. Nor does it explain why it never
moved to supplement the record once it was filed with this Court. See M.R.A.P. 10(e).
¶23. Moreover, given the seriousness of the State’s contention—and Scott’s concession of
the similarity between his proposed findings and the judge’s order—this Court actually
ordered the Bolivar County Circuit Court to make an evidentiary finding whether the
document the State attached to its brief had in fact been submitted by Scott’s counsel to the
trial judge. Prior to the trial court’s determination, the State made no attempt to present
evidence to the trial court to support its contention or otherwise ensure Scott’s proposed
findings became part of the record. It simply sat idly by.
¶24. Thus, through the State’s inaction, we are left with a serious appellate issue that has
no support in the record. Consequently, because there is no record evidence to support this
allegation, our precedent demands we find this issue to be without merit.
II. No “Malingering Test”
10
¶25. The State’s first two appellate issues center on the fact Dr. Zimmerman never
administered a test specifically designed to detect malingering.12 According to the State, Dr.
Zimmerman’s failure to give a “malingering test” ignored our mandate in Scott II and also
fell short of meeting Chase’s requirements.
A. Scott II’s Overruling
¶26. The State concedes the requirement that Scott take the MMPI-II was overruled by
Lynch. But it still insists Scott had to undergo some sort of malingering test to comply with
Scott II. However, our mandate in Scott II was based on a specific point of law—“The
MMPI-II test is required prior to adjudication on a claim of mental retardation pursuant to
Atkins and Chase.” Scott II, 938 So. 2d at 1233. And that specific point of law was
expressly overruled. Lynch, 951 So. 2d at 557. With that overruling went the requirement
that Scott had to obtain any further testing before his Atkins hearing.
B. Chase’s Requirements
¶27. With Scott II’s additional MMPI-II requirement overruled, Scott had the same burden
as any other Atkins claimant in Mississippi. In Chase, we held—
[N]o defendant may be adjudged mentally retarded for purposes of the Eighth Amendment, unless such defendant produces, at a minimum, an expert who
12 Malingering is the “intentional production of false or grossly exaggerated physical or psychological symptoms, motivated by external incentives such as avoiding military duty, avoiding work, obtaining financial compensation, evading criminal prosecution, or obtaining drugs.” Foster, 848 So. 2d at 175 (Miss. 2003); see also Scott II, 878 So. 2d at 946 (defining malingering as “grossly exaggerating or fabricating information” for reasons including “avoiding arrest or evading prosecution and incarceration”). In the death-penalty context, malingering has been described as the “deliberate feigning of [intellectual disability] in order to avoid the death penalty.” Thomas v. Allen, 614 F. Supp. 2d 1257, 1302 (N.D. Ala. 2009). 11
expresses an opinion, to a reasonable degree of certainty, that:
1. The defendant is mentally retarded, as that term is defined by the American Association on Mental Retardation and/or The American Psychiatric Association;13
2. The defendant has completed the Minnesota Multi phasic Personality Inventory-II (MMPI-II) and/or other similar tests, and the defendant is not malingering.
Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1029.
¶28. According to the State, to meet Chase’s second prong, Dr. Zimmerman had to
administer a test specifically designed to detect malingering—simply administering two
different IQ tests and comparing the results could not suffice.
¶29. We disagree. As this court previously clarified in Lynch, there is no mandate of
specific testing to meet Chase’s requirements. Lynch, 951 So. 2d at 556-57. Instead, Scott
could rely on “any other tests and procedures permitted under the Mississippi Rules of
Evidence, and deemed necessary to assist the expert and the trial court in forming an opinion
as to whether the defendant is malingering.” Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1028 n.19 (emphasis
added).
¶30. Here, both Scott’s expert and the State’s expert did agree on one thing. Both claimed
13 In 2004, we adopted both the American Association on Mental Retardation (AAMR)’s and the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s then-current definitions of “mental retardation.” Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1027-28. A decade later, we updated the term “mental retardation” to “intellectual disability” and adopted the latest definitions by AAMR, now the American Association for Intellectual and Developmental Disability (AAIDD) and the APA. Chase III, 171 So. 3d at 469-70. “The new AAIDD and APA definitions are similar and require the same three basic elements of intellectual disability as the earlier definitions: significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, significant deficits in adaptive behavior, and manifestation before age eighteen.” Id. 12
no malingering test has been “normed” for the intellectually disabled. For this reason, Dr.
Zimmerman administered no malingering tests, instead finding consistency across different
IQ tests ruled out malingering. By contrast, Dr. Storer administered four malingering tests,
finding consistency across different malingering tests indicated malingering. “Neither side’s
methodology, approach, or understanding of the issue is infallible.” Doss, 19 So. 3d at 714.
So long as the expert opinion about malingering is admissible under our Rules of Evidence,
the chosen method for reaching that conclusion goes to the weight and credibility of the
expert opinion, not its sufficiency to meet Chase’s requirement. See Chase, 873 So. 2d at
1028 n.19; see also Phillips v. State, 984 So. 2d 503, 510 (Fla. 2008) (deferring to the trial
court’s determination that the state’s expert, who testified the defendant was malingering,
was more credible than the defendant’s expert, who did not test the defendant for
malingering).
C. Mississippi Rule of Evidence 702
¶31. This brings us to the State’s alternative argument that Dr. Zimmerman’s expert
opinion that Scott was not malingering was inadmissible under Rule 702 because the back-to
back-IQ-test procedure does not find support within the forensic-psychology community.
See M.R.E. 702.
¶32. Under Rule 702:
If scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will assist the trier of fact to understand the evidence or to determine a fact in issue, a witness qualified as an expert by knowledge, skill, experience, training, or education, may testify thereto in the form of an opinion or otherwise, if (1) the testimony is based upon sufficient facts or data, (2) the testimony is the product of reliable principles and methods, and (3) the witness has applied the principles
13
and methods reliably to the facts of the case.
Essentially, the State is arguing Dr. Zimmerman’s testimony about malingering does not meet
the second prong because it is not the product of reliable principles and methods.
¶33. But at the Atkins hearing, Scott presented evidence the forensic-psychology
community has accepted Dr. Zimmerman’s method—namely, the article by Dr. Macvaugh
and Dr. Cunningham. In addressing the suggestion no malingering test has been normed for
the intellectually disabled, Dr. Macvaugh and Dr. Cunningham opined that assessing
suboptimum effort is “greatly assisted by the presence of intellectual assessment results that
predate the capital charge. The stability of results from repeated intellectual assessments
that are separated by years . . . is also of inferential benefit.” Macvaugh & Cunningham,
supra at 173. While admittedly not aware of any “longitudinal research investigating this
premise,” in their view “it would seem to be a task of improbable complexity to ‘dial in’ a
performance consistent with mild mental retardation on multiple test administrations
separated by years, particularly when different instruments have been employed.” Id.
¶34. The State argues Dr. Zimmerman’s back-to-back IQ testing did not put into practice
the article’s theory that it would be difficult to fake consistent scores on different tests
“separated by years.” But Dr. Zimmerman did not rely solely on back-to-back tests. In line
with the article, Dr. Zimmerman compared Scott’s scores on the two IQ tests he had
administered in 2005 with Scott’s scores on four prior IQ tests administered years earlier, two
of which were administered before he committed the capital crime, all of which yielded
14
scores in the intellectually disabled range.14
¶35. Admission of expert testimony is within the sound discretion of the trial court. Bishop
v. State, 982 So. 2d 371, 380 (Miss. 2008). And here, the trial court considered Dr.
Macvaugh and Dr. Cunningham’s article when ultimately ruling Dr. Zimmerman’s opinion
on malingering was reliable. Given our deferential standard of review, we find no reversible
error in admitting Dr. Zimmerman’s expert opinion that Scott’s multiple consistent IQ scores
in the intellectually disabled range ruled out the possibility of malingering.15
III. Additional Expert
14 Scott first was tested in 1992, when he applied for Social Security disability benefits. He scored a 48. A year later, Farris administered the WISC as part of the comprehensive assessment by Scott’s school. Scott obtained a full-scale score of 68. And after he was arrested, Scott took the WAIS-III twice in 1997. The State’s expert, Dr. Criss Lott, assessed Scott a full-scale score of 73. And Scott’s expert, Dr. Mulry Tetlow, gave Scott a full-scale score of 60. In Chase, this Court adopted the American Psychiatric Association’s view “that ‘mild’ mental retardation is typically used to describe persons with an IQ level of 50-55 to approximately 70,” though “mental retardation may, under certain conditions, be present in an individual with an IQ of up to 75.” Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1028. 15 Other jurisdictions have relied on this comparative method to rule out malingering. E.g., Brumfield v. Cain, 808 F.3d 1041, 1060 (5th Cir. 2015) (rejecting Louisiana’s argument that the defendant’s low IQ scores were the result of “low effort” in part because the defendant’s expert testified the defendant’s “consistent scores across multiple tests over multiple years ruled out malingering”); U.S. v. Nelson, 419 F. Supp. 2d 891, 902 (E.D. La. 2006) (finding the “most compelling argument against the possibility of malingering in this case is the overwhelming consistency among all the intelligence testing”); Black v. State, 2005 WL 2662577, at *5 (Tenn. Crim. App. Oct. 19, 2005) (unreported) (noting the defendant’s expert saw no evidence of malingering, even though he did not specifically test for it, because “he administered a battery of tests, which would in effect rule out malingering because it’s difficult to perform poorly on the same concept on various tests”); see also Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986, 2011, 188 L. Ed. 2d 1007 (2014) (Alito, J., dissenting) (dissenting in part based on the “well-accepted view . . . that multiple consistent scores establish a much higher degree of confidence” that the score is an accurate reflection of the defendant’s actual intellectual ability”). 15
¶36. In addition to challenging the admissibility of Dr. Zimmerman’s expert testimony, the
State also argues the trial judge erred by permitting school psychologist Gussie Farris to
testify.
¶37. According to the State, “Chase requires a ‘licensed psychologist[,]’ which Farris is
not.” Instead, Farris is a masters-level school psychologist for the Coahoma County School
District, licensed through the Mississippi Department of Education, with more than thirty
years’ experience in special education and administration of IQ tests.
¶38. The State is correct that Chase requires an expert opinion from “a licensed
psychologist or psychiatrist, qualified as an expert in the field of assessing [intellectual
disability], and further qualified as an expert in the administration and interpretation of tests,
and in the evaluation of persons, for purposes of determining [intellectual disability].”
Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1029. But “[u]pon meeting this initial requirement to go forward, the
defendant may present such other opinions and evidence as the trial court may allow pursuant
to the Mississippi Rules of Evidence.” Id. In other words, while Chase requires the expert
opinion of at least one licensed psychologist, it does not restrict expert testimony to licensed
psychologists only. Instead, so long as Farris properly qualified as an expert under
Mississippi Rule of Evidence 702, she could give an expert opinion at Scott’s hearing.
Chase, 873 So. 2d at 1029.
¶39. Again, we point out the admission of expert testimony is within the sound discretion
of the trial court. Bishop, 982 So. 2d at 380. To be admissible, “[e]xpert testimony must be
relevant and reliable.” Bateman v. State, 125 So. 3d 616, 625 (Miss. 2013). And here,
16
Farris’s testimony was both. Her testimony of Scott’s 1993 assessment and school records
was relevant. And her education and experience supported the trial judge’s finding that her
expert testimony was reliable. Thus, the trial judge did not abuse his discretion when he
admitted Farris as an expert.
¶40. Still, the State challenges Farris’s reliability, arguing she made statements during
cross-examination that showed she was biased. But concerns of bias go to the weight and
credibility of Farris’s testimony, not its admissibility. And the trial judge—not this court—is
the “sole authority for determining credibility of the witnesses.” Doss, 19 So. 3d at 694
(quoting Loden v. State, 971 So. 2d 548, 572-573 (Miss. 2007)). The trial judge found
Farris’s testimony to be credible. Our standard of review requires we defer to his credibility
determination.
IV. Opposing Experts
¶41. In its first two issues, the State challenged the legal sufficiency and admissibility of
Dr. Zimmerman’s expert testimony, based on his underlying methodology. In its fourth
issue, the State challenges the weight the trial judge afforded Dr. Zimmerman’s expert
testimony that Scott met all three criteria of intellectual disability. Essentially, the State
argues the trial judge picked the wrong expert. Instead of relying on Dr. Zimmerman’s
opinion to support a holding of intellectual disability, the State suggests the trial judge should
have believed the view of its expert, Dr. Storer, who found Scott was malingering.
¶42. But our legal role as a reviewing court is not to second-guess whether Dr. Storer’s
opinion that Scott was malingering was more credible than Dr. Zimmerman’s opinion that
17
Scott was intellectually disabled. Instead, in cases like this one, where “we have . . . experts
who take opposite positions as to whether” Scott is intellectually disabled, Mississippi law
requires we defer to the trial judge, who “sits as the trier of fact and assesses the totality of
the evidence as well as the credibility of witnesses.” Doss, 19 So. 3d at 714. Only when a
trial judge’s finding on intellectual disability is “clearly erroneous” may we disturb it.
Goodin v. State, 102 So. 3d 1102, 1111 (Miss. 2012). But the mere likelihood we would not
have bought a particular expert’s view or would have ruled differently than the trial judge
does not amount to clear error. Booker v. State, 5 So. 3d 356, 358 n.2 (Miss. 2008) (citing
Easley v. Cromartie, 532 U.S. 234, 242, 121 S. Ct. 1452, 149 L. Ed. 2d 430 (2001)).
¶43. Here, the trial judge was faced with battling experts. Scott’s consisted of a licensed
forensic psychologist and a school psychologist who both testified Scott was intellectually
disabled. And the State offered a licensed psychology expert who testified he could not
reach a reasonable degree of certainty about the issue. After hearing from all experts, the
judge found Dr. Zimmerman’s and Farris’s testimony to be more credible. This finding is
entitled to deference. See Doss, 19 So. 3d at 714; see also Phillips, 984 So. 2d at 510
(“Although Phillips challenges the trial court’s credibility finding, we give deference to the
court’s evaluation of the expert opinions.”).
¶44. Further, this finding was supported by lay testimony of Scott’s mother and special
education teacher, Scott’s school records, and the fact he had received social security
disability benefits as a teenager based on “severe mental retardation.” Therefore, we do not
disturb the trial judge’s finding of intellectual disability on appeal.

Outcome: