Justices side with Texas death row inmate who argued intellectual disability

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a Texas man on death row who argued he was mentally disabled and could not be executed.

In a 5-3 ruling, the court said the state’s definition and standards for assessing intellectual disability “create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed.”

Those standards, known as the Briseno factors, take into account whether neighbors, teachers and friends think the person is intellectually disabled, makes plans or was impulsive, is a leader or a follower, responds in a rational way to situations, respond coherently to oral or written questions and can hide facts or lie to others in their own interest.

In delivering the opinion of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said adjudications of intellectual disability should be informed by the views of medical experts.

{mosads}“Texas cannot satisfactorily explain why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to superseded standards when an individual’s life is at stake,” she wrote in the majority opinion, which Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined.

The case centered on Bobby James Moore, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for fatally shooting a store clerk during a botched robbery that occurred when Moore was 20 years old.

Evidence at his trial showed that he had significant mental and social difficulties beginning at an early age. At 13, he lacked basic understanding of the days of the week, the months of the year and the seasons. He could hardly tell time or understand the basic principle that subtraction is the reverse of addition.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA), however, said Moore had failed to prove significantly sub-average intellectual functioning with an IQ score of 74.

Ginsburg said, however, that when an IQ score is close to, but above, 70, court precedent requires courts to account for the test’s “standard error of measurement” and consider a defendant’s adaptive functioning.

She said the court also deviated from prevailing clinical standards in considering his adaptive functioning.

Chief Justice John Roberts filed a dissenting opinion that Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas joined.

Roberts said he agrees that the state used unacceptable standards to analyze Moore’s adaptive deficits, but disagreed that it erred in analyzing Moore’s intellectual functioning.

“The Court overturns the CCA’s conclusion that Moore failed to present sufficient evidence of both inadequate intellectual functioning and significant deficits in adaptive behavior without even considering ‘objective indicia of society’s standards’ reflected in the practices among the states,” he wrote.

“The Court instead crafts a constitutional holding based solely on what it deems to be medical consensus about intellectual disability.”

The case has now been remanded back to the lower court for further proceedings.

–This report was updated at 11:27 a.m.