The high court made that determination in the case
of Bobby Moore, whom the court decided is intellectually disabled.
Moore's case highlights the complexities surrounding
intellectual disability and the death penalty. The Supreme Court has ruled that
those with intellectual disabilities can’t be executed, and after reviewing
Moore’s case in 2016, it tossed
out the way the Texas court determines the disability in 2017. The
Texas court previously relied on decades-old medical standards and a
controversial set of factors created by judges to make the determination,
including how well the inmate could lie.
After that ruling, the prosecutor
sided with Moore and said that he is intellectually disabled, but the
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals still disagreed, claiming
last Junethat he was eligible for execution under current medical standards
as well. Now, the high court has stepped in again, and this time, the majority
of justices made clear that Moore has shown he is disabled and therefore
ineligible for execution. The court's opinion knocked the Texas court for relying
on the same methods it had ruled against in the 2017 opinion, like focusing on
Moore's strengths instead of his weaknesses, especially strengths gained in a
controlled prison environment.
The justices also said that despite the Texas court saying
it had eliminated its controversial set of factors, which the high court said
were problematic for advancing stereotypes, "it seems to have used many of
those factors in reaching its conclusion."
"To be sure, the court of appeals opinion is not
identical to the opinion we considered in Moore," the justices wrote.
"There are sentences here and there suggesting other modes of analysis
consistent with what we said. But there are also sentences here and there
suggesting reliance upon what we earlier called 'lay stereotypes of the
intellectually disabled.'"
Moore, 59, was sentenced to death more than 38 years ago
after he fatally shot a 73-year-old clerk during a Houston robbery in 1980. In
2014, a Texas court determined under current medical standards that Moore was
intellectually disabled — with evidence including low IQ scores and his
inability to tell time or days of the week as a teenager.
But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overruled that
decision, saying the lower court failed to use its test in making the
determination. The Supreme Court invalidated that method upon review.
"By rejecting the habeas court’s application of medical
guidance and clinging to the standard it laid out ... the CCA failed adequately
to inform itself of the 'medical community’s diagnostic framework,'"
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the 5-3 opinion in 2017.
In an unusual step, the prosecutor — Harris County District
Attorney Kim Ogg, a Democrat — filed a brief to the Texas court after that
ruling stating that she agreed with Moore that he was intellectually disabled
and should not be executed. In a surprise June opinion, the Texas Court of
Criminal Appeals agreed to use current medical standards as a method to
determine if a death row inmate had an intellectual disability but said that
Moore still did not qualify.
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