---
title: 'Controversial Texas Case on Mental Retardation Results in Life Sentence'
description: 'Texas death row inmate Jose Garcia Briseño, whose case was used by the Texas courts to establish a very restrictive definition of mental retardation, has…'
canonical: 'https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/controversial-texas-case-on-mental-retardation-results-in-life-sentence'
section: news
date: '2013-04-29T18:22:57-04:00'
updated: '2025-03-14T14:34:57-04:00'
source: 'Death Penalty Information Center'
---

! **Texas** death row inmate [Jose Garcia Briseño](/upcoming-execution-man-be-executed-changed-lives-while-death-row), whose case was used by the Texas courts to establish a very restrictive definition of mental retardation, has been resentenced to life without parole. His sentence was the result of a plea bargain ending years of litigation. Briseño has been on death row for over 20 years, and received a stay of execution in 2009 just 5 days before he was to be executed. Briseño's lawyers have argued he is intellectually disabled, and therefore ineligible for the death penalty, but a Texas court said his crime required forethought, planning, and complex execution, so he was not mentally retarded. No other state uses such non-scientific factors in determining intellectual disability. Recently, the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities criticized the use of these "Briseño factors" in a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court: “\[The Texas\] impressionistic ‘test’ directs fact-finders to use ‘factors’ that are based on false stereotypes about mental retardation that effectively exclude all but the most severely incapacitated.” (*Chester v. Thaler* 2012). Staff from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had earlier intervened on Briseño's behalf because he had been so helpful to other inmates.

(Texas Defender Service, April 26, 2013.) See [**Intellectual Disabilities**](/intellectual-disability-and-death-penalty) and [**Texas**](/texas-1).