Roger Lee Cherry v. Julie L. Jones, etc.

In 2007, this Court unanimously denied Roger Lee Cherry relief on his claim of intellectual disability because Cherry had a full scale IQ score of 72. Cherry v. State, 959 So.2d 702 (Fla.2007). The Court was wrong, as we have now been told by the United States Supreme Court in Hall v. Florida, — U.S. -, 134 S.Ct. 1986, 188 L.Ed.2d 1007 (2014), and the error is of such constitutional magnitude that the Eighth Amendment demands that the error be corrected. I was part of the Court in Cherry that made a legal error — one that could literally mean the difference between life and death.

Yet Justice…