Entries tagged with “Bobby James Moore”
Issues
Jun 10, 2020
Bobby Moore, Whose Case Changed How Texas Determines Intellectual Disability, Granted Parole After 40 Years in Prison
Bobby Moore (pictured), the man at the center of a case that altered how Texas determines intellectual disability in death-penalty cases, has been granted parole after spending 40 years in prison. He served nearly all of that sentence on Texas’ death row. The U.S. Supreme Court twice reversed Texas appeals court decisions that would have permitted Moore’s execution before his death sentence was ultimately overturned. In 2017, in Moore v. Texas, the Court unanimously struck down Texas’…
Issues
Mar 31, 2020
Texas Appeals Court Rejects Recommendation for New Trial for Death-Row Prisoner
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has once again rejected the findings of a trial court that a death-row prisoner was entitled to relief from his conviction or death sentence. Applying a narrow interpretation of a 2013 junk-science law, the court on March 11, 2020 set aside the recommendation of an El Paso County trial court that death-row prisoner Rigoberto Avila should be granted a new trial as a result of the prosecution’s reliance on false and outdated scientific evidence. The…
Issues
Nov 06, 2019
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…
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
Nov 30, 2018
Prominent, Diverse Voices Call for Supreme Court to Once Again Stop Bobby James Moore’s Execution
Twenty months after the Unites States Supreme Court unanimously struck down Texas’s non-scientific standard for evaluating intellectual disability in death penalty cases, the landmark case in which it made that decision is back before the Court. On December 7, 2018, the Court will conference Moore v. Texas, to decide if it will review whether the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) once again unconstitutionally relied on lay stereotypes and non-clinical criteria in rejecting Bobby James…
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
Nov 02, 2017
Texas Prosecutors Agree Bobby Moore is Intellectually Disabled, Should Be Resentenced to Life
In a Houston death-penalty case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a decision overturning the Texas courts’ standard for determining Intellectual Disability in capital cases, prosecutors have conceded that Bobby James Moore (pictured) is himself intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty. In a brief filed November 1 in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Harris County prosecutors agreed with Moore’s lawyers and mental health advocacy organizations that Moore…
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…