BOISE -- The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals says a federal judge in Idaho must reconsider whether a death row inmate is too mentally disabled to be executed.
Tuesday's order in Gerald Pizzuto Jr.'s case came in the wake of an earlier U.S. Supreme Court ruling. The high court found in a case out of Florida that states can't use a fixed IQ score to determine whether an inmate may be put to death.
Pizzuto was sentenced to death in 1986 for the murders of Berta Herndon and Del Dean Herndon as they were prospecting near McCall. Pizzuto claims that he is too mentally disabled to be executed under Idaho law, which defines mental disability as an IQ of 70 or less. The state says Pizzuto's IQ is higher.
