Federal court rejects IQ defense in death case

Miriam B. Airington, part of the legal team representing Alfredo R. Prieto, said Wednesday that Prieto intends to take the case to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals.

Hudson on Tuesday denied the petition on all 14 elements raised by the defense. The case stems from death sentences issued by a jury in the 1988 double murder of a Fairfax County couple. Prieto was linked to the crimes more than 17 years later through a cold hit DNA sample.

At the time of his arrest, Prieto, 48, was on death row in California in an unrelated case.

The matter is the first in Virginia that has addressed the implications of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in May that states cannot set a specific IQ benchmark that establishes intellectual disability. The case also raises the issue of the court’s ability to retroactively rule on an ended matter in light of subsequent findings by the high court.

Prieto, while not asserting his innocence as part of the petition, argued that there was sufficient evidence to bar a death sentence based on his level of disability and his poor life skills.

In a Florida case, the Supreme Court held that states cannot establish a strict IQ level, 70, at or below which a defendant is considered intellectually disabled. Some measures of Prieto’s IQ placed him below that threshold, which also exists in Virginia law. Virginia, as well as Florida, bars the execution of intellectually disabled people.

Hudson, however, found that the Virginia threshold is offset in part by other criteria used to assess a person’s ability to function and reason in society. The jury in Prieto’s case clearly and fully assessed those additional measures, the judge ruled.

Hudson found that the very nature of the killings suggested “it is unlikely (Prieto) would have been able to carry out these crimes by himself” had he been intellectually disabled.

“The evidence of adaptive functioning overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that Prieto has not met his burden here,” Hudson wrote. The jury “made a reasonable conclusion that he was not intellectually disabled.”