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 had previously rejected Long’s intellectual disability claim, but had applied an overly harsh definition of intellectual disability that was declared unconstitutional in Moore. Long was convicted and sentenced to death in Dallas for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in 2005. Although the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 that it was unconstitutional to apply the death penalty to a person with Intellectual Disability—then known as mental retardation—and had previously ruled in a Texas case in 1989 that juries must consider a defendant’s mental retardation as a potential basis to spare his or her life, Long’s trial lawyer did not have him evaluated for mental retardation. In May 2008, his post-conviction lawyers raised the issue in his state habeas corpus proceedings, and the state courts rejected his claim, analyzing the issue under the “Briseño factors,” a non-scientific series of questions developed by the state court in the case of Jose Garcia Briseño. Mr. Long then raised—and lost—the issue in the Texas federal district court, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit refusing to consider his appeal. However, on March 28, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas’s use of the Briseño factors, and less than one month later Long filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to apply its ruling in Moore to his case. While that appeal was pending and briefing was ongoing, Texas scheduled an execution date for Long during a period in which the Court was in summer recess. Long filed an application for a stay of execution in the Supreme Court. He then filed a new habeas petition in state court on August 3, 2017, reasserting the intellectual disability claim the state courts had initially denied and sought a stay of execution in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The state court wrote, “In light of this new law and the facts of applicant’s application, we have determined that applicant’s execution should be stayed pending further order of this Court.” Briefing has been completed on his petition seeking U.S. Supreme Court review, and a decision is expected in early October on whether the Court will review his case.