Supreme Court Directs Florida to Reconsider Intellectual Disability Decision in Death Penalty Case

The United States Supreme Court has ordered the Florida Supreme Court to recon­sid­er a deci­sion that had denied a death-row pris­on­er’s claim that he was inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty because he has Intellectual Disability. On October 16, the Court reversed and remand­ed the case of Tavares Wright (pic­tured, left), direct­ing the Florida courts to recon­sid­er his intel­lec­tu­al-dis­abil­i­ty claim in light of the con­sti­tu­tion­al stan­dard the Court set forth in its March 2017 deci­sion in Moore v. Texas.

The deci­sion in Wright v. Florida was the sixth time the Court has vacat­ed a state or fed­er­al court’s rejec­tion of an intel­lec­tu­al-dis­abil­i­ty claim and remand­ed the case for recon­sid­er­a­tion under Moore—and the third time it has done so in less than a month. Earlier in October, the Court vacat­ed two deci­sions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit and remand­ed the cas­es of Texas death-row pris­on­ers Obie Weathers and Steven Long for recon­sid­er­a­tion in light of Moore, and on October 18, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals cit­ed Moore as grounds for recon­sid­er­ing its own pri­or rejec­tion of intel­lec­tu­al-dis­abil­i­ty claims raised by Carnell Petetan, Jr. (pic­tured, right). 

Moore was expect­ed to have broad impact in Texas, where — the Court unan­i­mous­ly agreed — the state courts had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly adopt­ed an unsci­en­tif­ic set of lay stereo­types to deter­mine whether a defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty had impair­ments in func­tion­ing that qual­i­fied him or her as intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. Five mem­bers of the Court also stressed in the major­i­ty opin­ion in Moore that the state had improp­er­ly reject­ed claims of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty by empha­siz­ing a cap­i­tal defen­dan­t’s per­ceived adap­tive strengths, instead of ​“focus[ing] the adap­tive-func­tion­ing inquiry on adap­tive deficits,” as required by accept­ed medical practice. 

Lawyers in Harris County (Houston) — which has exe­cut­ed more pris­on­ers than any oth­er coun­ty—antic­i­pate that more than a dozen pris­on­ers sen­tenced to death in that coun­ty may be enti­tled to recon­sid­er­a­tion of their death sen­tences under Moore, and one pris­on­er, Robert James Campbell, has already been resen­tenced to life. However, the Supreme Court’s recent rul­ings indi­cate that its pro­nounce­ment in Moore that a state’s deter­mi­na­tion of Intellectual Disability must be ​“informed by the med­ical community’s diag­nos­tic frame­work” is not lim­it­ed to Texas. 

In May, the Court vacat­ed a deci­sion of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals in the case of Taurus Carroll after his lawyer invoked Moore to argue that Alabama had uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly devi­at­ed from accept­ed meth­ods of deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. In the Florida case, Wright’s lawyers argued that the state supreme court’s deci­sion in his case was incon­sis­tent with a line of Supreme Court cas­es on intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty—Atkins v. Virginia (2002), which declared exe­cu­tion of those with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al; Hall v. Florida (2014), which struck down Florida’s approach to mea­sur­ing the role of IQ in deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty; and Moore. Although its order did not set forth the rea­sons for its deci­sion, the Supreme Court agreed and direct­ed the Florida courts to recon­sid­er the issue.