Entries tagged with “Moore v. Texas”
Issues
Jun 11, 2021
Georgia Supreme Court Upholds ‘Uniquely High and Onerous’ Burden of Proving Intellectual Disability in Death Penalty Cases
The Georgia Supreme Court has denied a constitutional challenge to the state’s statutory requirement that a capital defendant must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he or she is intellectually disabled before being declared ineligible for the death penalty. In an 8 – 1 ruling issued on June 1, 2021, the Georgia high court affirmed the conviction and death sentence imposed on Rodney Young. Young had argued that requiring a capital defendant to meet the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard — the…
Issues
Foreign Nationals
,Oct 02, 2020
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Reverses Course, Takes A Second Foreign National with Intellectual Disability Off Death Row
For second time in eight days, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has reversed course after initially rejecting a death-row prisoner’s claim of intellectual disability and has resentenced the prisoner to life. The decisions, both involving foreign nationals and both supported by local prosecutors, marked the sixth and seventh time that Texas courts have vacated death sentences imposed on intellectually disabled capital defendants since the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 struck down the…
Issues
Sep 21, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of September 14, 2020
NEWS (9/17/20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has denied post-conviction relief to Ken Lott, retroactively applying its new rule that a death sentence imposed under the state’s unconstitutional judicial fact-finding statute did not violate Lott’s right to a jury trial because the jury had unanimously found an aggravating circumstance. The court held that Lott’s Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial in his capital sentencing proceeding extended only to the determination of whether the…
Issues
Feb 20, 2019
U.S. Supreme Court Again Reverses Texas Court’s Rejection of Intellectual Disability Claim
Overturning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the second time, the United States Supreme Court ruled on February 19, 2019, that Texas death-row prisoner Bobby James Moore is intellectually disabled and may not be executed. In an unsigned opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the latest Texas appeals court decision that would have allowed Moore’s execution, saying the state court had relied on many of the same improper lay stereotypes and committed many of the same errors that had led the…
Issues
Jun 07, 2018
“Outlier” Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Upholds Bobby James Moore’s Death Sentence
In a ruling three dissenters criticized as an “outlier,” and after having been rebuked by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017 for ignoring the medical consensus defining intellectual disability, a sharply divided (5 – 3) Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) has upheld the death sentence imposed on Bobby James Moore (pictured) 38 years ago. On June 6, 2018, the CCA ruled that Bobby Moore is not intellectually disabled under the most recent clinical definition of the disability and may be executed…
Issues
Feb 16, 2018
Is Racially Biased Testimony Wrongly Subjecting Intellectually Disabled Defendants to the Death Penalty?
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia categorically bars states from executing any person who has Intellectual Disability. (Daryl Atkins is pictured.) However, as reported in recent stories in Pacific Standard Magazine and the newspaper, The Atlanta Black Star, some states have attempted to circumvent the Atkins ruling by using social stereotypes and race as grounds to argue that defendants of color are not intellectually disabled. Prosecutors in at least eight states…
Issues
Oct 19, 2017
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.
Issues
Executions Overview
,Aug 29, 2017
Texas Execution Stayed to Permit Proper Consideration of Intellectual Disability Claim
A Texas appeals court has stayed the August 30 execution of Steven Long (pictured) to provide him an opportunity to litigate a claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. On August 21, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued the stay and remanded Long’s case to a Dallas County trial court, directing the court to reconsider his claim of intellectual disability in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2017 ruling in Moore v. Texas. The Texas courts…
Issues
May 19, 2017
STUDY: Juries Have Never Found Anyone Intellectually Disabled Under Georgia’s Insurmountable Standard of Proof
No death penalty jury has ever found a defendant charged with intentional murder to be ineligible for the death penalty under Georgia’s intellectual disability law, according to a new empirical study published in Georgia State University Law Review. The study, by Georgia State Law Professor Lauren Sudeall Lucas, examined 30 years of jury verdicts under the state’s Guilty But Mentally Retarded statute, which has the most onerous standard in the nation for proving intellectual disability.
Issues
Mar 28, 2017
Supreme Court Overturns Texas’ “Outlier” Standard for Determining Intellectual Disability in Capital Cases
The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously struck down Texas’ standard for evaluating intellectual disability in death penalty cases, calling the state’s approach an “outlier” that, “[b]y design and in operation, … create[s] an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed.” In Moore v. Texas, the Court on March 28 vacated the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), which had applied an unscientific set of lay stereotypes known as the “Briseño factors”…
Issues
Nov 30, 2016
U.S. Supreme Court Hears Argument in Texas Intellectual Disability Case
During argument November 29 in the case of Moore v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court expressed skepticism about Texas’ idiosyncratic method of deciding whether a capital defendant has Intellectual Disability and is therefore ineligible for the death penalty. A trial court, applying the criteria for Intellectual Disability established by the medical community, found that Bobby James Moore (pictured) was not subject to the death penalty. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal reversed that…
Issues
New Voices
,Nov 23, 2016
NEW VOICES: Special Olympics Chair Urges Supreme Court to Strike Down Texas’ ‘Horrific’ Criteria for Determining Intellectual Disability
Timothy Shriver (pictured), the Chairman of the Special Olympics, has called on the U.S. Supreme Court to end Texas’ “use of stigmatizing stereotypes” in determining whether a defendant has Intellectual Disability and is therefore ineligible for execution. On November 29, the Court will hear argument in Moore v. Texas, a case challenging Texas’ use of the “Briseño factors” — a set of unscientific criteria based in part on the fictional character of Lennie Smalls from the novel “Of Mice and…