On June 23, 2011, a district court ruled that Joseph Smith suffers from mental retardation and is, therefore, ineligible for the death penalty. In a lengthy opinion addressing numerous aspects of a retrospective mental retardation assessment, the court addressed, inter alia, the following issues: suggestions that the IQ scores were unreliable due to malingering; concerns raised about the scoring of adaptive functioning measures; suggestions that the defendant's adaptive functioning deficits were actually behavioral deficits, and; problems inherent in relying upon correctional officers to supply adaptive functioning information. Click here for the full opinion.