After Being Reversed Twice, Texas Appeals Court Takes Intellectually Disabled Prisoner Off Death Row

After being reversed twice by the United States Supreme Court, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has resen­tenced intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled death-row pris­on­er Bobby James Moore to life in prison. In a three-page deci­sion issued on November 6, 2019, 39 years after Moore was sen­tenced to death in Houston for a 1980 mur­der dur­ing a super­mar­ket rob­bery, the CCA con­ced­ed that the U.S. Supreme Court has deter­mined that ​“Moore … is a per­son with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty.” Given that deter­mi­na­tion, the CCA wrote, “[t]here is noth­ing left for us to do but to imple­ment the Supreme Court’s decision.” 

The CCA had been repeat­ed­ly crit­i­cized in the past for allow­ing the exe­cu­tion of intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled pris­on­ers despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 rul­ing in Atkins v. Virginia that the prac­tice con­sti­tut­ed cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment. In March 2017, in Moore’s case, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly struck down the state’s use of a set of lay stereo­types to eval­u­ate intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in death penal­ty cas­es as an unsci­en­tif­ic ​“inven­tion … untied to any acknowl­edged source” that lacked sup­port from ​“any author­i­ty, med­ical or judi­cial.” The Court wrote that Texas’s ​“out­lier” approach, “[b]y design and in oper­a­tion, … create[s] an unac­cept­able risk that per­sons with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty will be executed.” 

The Court returned Moore’s case to the CCA with direc­tions to recon­sid­er his claim based upon pre­vail­ing clin­i­cal stan­dards for assess­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. At that time, Harris County pros­e­cu­tors agreed with Moore’s lawyers and men­tal health advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions that Moore meets the med­ical­ly estab­lished cri­te­ria for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and there­fore could not be exe­cut­ed. Nonetheless, the CCA again ruled against Moore. Three judges dis­sent­ed, cat­a­logu­ing the numer­ous groups that had con­clud­ed Moore sat­is­fied the med­ical cri­te­ria for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. They wrote: ​“There is only one out­lier in this group that con­cludes that appli­cant is inel­i­gi­ble for exe­cu­tion due to his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, but unfor­tu­nate­ly for appli­cant, at this junc­ture, it is the only one that mat­ters. Today, in soli­tude, a major­i­ty of this Court holds that appli­cant is not intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, and it denies his appli­ca­tion for habeas relief.”

In February 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court again reversed, crit­i­ciz­ing the CCA for rely­ing upon the same improp­er lay stereo­types and com­mit­ting many of the same errors that had led the Court to over­turn the CCA’s pri­or deci­sion in the case. The Justices inde­pen­dent­ly reviewed the evi­dence, con­clud­ed that Moore met the cri­te­ria for intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, and returned the case to the Texas courts. 

The CCA wrote that the Supreme Court’s con­clu­sion that Moore is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled ​“is deter­mi­na­tive.… Accordingly, we reform Applicant’s sen­tence of death to a sen­tence of life imprisonment.”

Moore’s defense team expressed plea­sure at the court’s rul­ing. ​“We great­ly appre­ci­ate that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has imple­ment­ed the Supreme Court deci­sion and has ensured that jus­tice is done regard­ing the inap­pro­pri­ate­ness of the death penal­ty for Bobby Moore,” Cliff Sloan wrote in a state­ment.