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 Justices two years ago to strike down Texas’s ​“out­lier” approach to deter­min­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Court said that the Texas rul­ing, ​“when tak­en as a whole and when read in the light both of our pri­or opin­ion and the tri­al court record, rests upon analy­sis too much of which too close­ly resem­bles what we pre­vi­ous­ly found improper.”

This deci­sion marked the sec­ond time the Supreme Court had reversed a Court of Criminal Appeals denial of Moore’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim. In 2014, a Texas tri­al court, apply­ing pre­vail­ing clin­i­cal stan­dards, found that Moore was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and there­fore inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty under the Supreme Court’s 2002 deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) over­turned that deci­sion, say­ing Moore had not sat­is­fied a Texas-spe­cif­ic stan­dard called the ​“Briseño fac­tors” (named after the Texas court deci­sion that announced them). In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly reject­ed the use of these fac­tors, call­ing them an unsci­en­tif­ic ​“inven­tion” of the TCCA that was ​“untied to any acknowl­edged source” and lacked sup­port from ​“any author­i­ty, med­ical or judi­cial.” The Court crit­i­cized the TCCA’s reliance upon ​“lay stereo­types” about what peo­ple with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty can and can­not do and its mis­placed focus on things Moore was able to do in a struc­tured prison set­ting instead of con­sid­er­ing his life his­to­ry of impair­ments in dai­ly adap­tive func­tion­ing, and direct­ed the TCCA to recon­sid­er the issue apply­ing appro­pri­ate diagnostic standards.

When the case returned to the state courts, numer­ous groups, includ­ing the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, filed friend-of-the-court briefs assert­ing that Moore met the pre­vail­ing med­ical def­i­n­i­tions of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office agreed with Moore and con­ced­ed that his death sen­tence should be vacat­ed. Nonetheless, over the sharp dis­sent of three judges, the TCCA again upheld Moore’s death sen­tence. With the back­ing of the men­tal health pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions, Special Olympics Chairman Tim Shriver, and a group of promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive lead­ers who described the TCCA’s flout­ing of the 2017 Supreme Court rul­ing as ​“inim­i­cal to the rule of law,” Moore again asked the Supreme Court to inter­vene. When Harris County pros­e­cu­tors again agreed that Moore was enti­tled to relief, the Texas Attorney General’s office attempt­ed to inter­vene in the case to defend the TCCA’s rul­ing. The Supreme Court reversed, writ­ing: ​“We … agree with Moore and the pros­e­cu­tor that, on the basis of the tri­al court record, Moore has shown he is a per­son with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty.” Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, dis­sent­ed, accus­ing the major­i­ty of improp­er­ly engag­ing in factfind­ing and fail­ing to pro­vide clar­i­ty to lower courts.

Cliff Sloan, a lawyer rep­re­sent­ing Moore, praised the rul­ing: ​“We great­ly appre­ci­ate today’s impor­tant rul­ing from the Supreme Court, and we are very pleased that jus­tice will be done for Bobby Moore.” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg also released a state­ment: ​“The Harris County District Attorney’s Office dis­agreed with our state’s high­est court and the attor­ney gen­er­al to stand for Justice in this case. The U.S. Supreme Court agreed.”

(D. Cassens Weiss, ​“For a sec­ond time, Supreme Court rules for Texas death-row inmate claim­ing intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty” ABA Journal, February 19, 2019; K. Blakinger, ​“Supreme Court sides with intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled Harris County death row inmate for sec­ond time”, Houston Chronicle, February 19, 2019; J. McCullough, ​“For the sec­ond time, U.S. Supreme Court revers­es death sen­tence deci­sion for Texas inmate Bobby Moore”, Texas Tribune, February 19, 2019; Lawrence Hurley, U.S. Supreme Court bars Texas from exe­cut­ing death row inmate, Reuters, February 19, 2019.) Read the Supreme Court’s opin­ion in Moore v. Texas, No. 18 – 443 (U.S. Feb. 19, 2019). See U.S. Supreme Court and Intellectual Disability.

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