United States: Moore v. Texas: US Supreme Court enforces constitutional prohibition against executing intellectually disabled defendants

A recent Supreme Court judgment in the US is being hailed as a triumph by death penalty abolition advocates. Moore v. Texas has enforced the prohibition against the execution of intellectually disabled defendants, by ruling against the state of Texas’ outdated methods of assessing intellectual disabilities – that were based on “stereotypes, fears, or myths”. In this guest blog, Robin M. Maher gives an overview of the precedent case and why it is reason for celebration.

It has been 15 years since the United States Supreme Court decided Atkins v. Virginia, the landmark decision finding that it was unconstitutional to execute defendants with an intellectual disability. The Court was clear about why the execution of this vulnerable and “less morally culpable” group of people violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments. But it gave the states no guidance about how to substantively and procedurally implement its decision, acknowledging the potential for “serious disagreement… in determining which offenders are in fact [intellectually disabled]”.

Moore v. Texas involved standard procedures used by the state of Texas to define intellectual disability. In 2004, Texas adopted the definitions and standards from the 1992 edition of the American Association on Mental Retardation Manual. It also adopted seven evidentiary factors that became known as the Briseño factors. These factors were not based on any medical, judicial or scientific authority: instead, they attempted to assess the “level and degree of mental retardation at which a consensus of Texas citizens would agree that a person should be exempted from the death penalty”.

Texas’ use of a “we know it when we see it” approach to identify intellectual disability was as bewildering as it was dangerous. Long criticised by legal, medical, and mental health professionals, the Briseño factors had no diagnostic legitimacy. Unfortunately, they were also lethally determinative of who would live or die in Texas.

Bobby James Moore was sentenced to death in 1980 for killing a clerk during a grocery store robbery. At his trial, just two months after his arrest, his incompetent lawyers presented no evidence of Moore’s intellectual disability (or any mitigation evidence at all). Moore was granted a new trial, and was again sentenced to death. While on appeal, Atkins v. Virginia was decided. In 2014, in connection with his claim that he should not be executed because he was intellectually disabled, he was granted a two-day evidentiary hearing.

The evidence established that Moore had significant mental and social difficulties which had begun at an early age. At age 13, he lacked a basic understanding of the days of the week, the months of the year and the seasons, and he could scarcely tell the time. Moore’s father, teachers and peers called him ‘stupid’ for his slow reading ability and speech. After failing school and being cast out of his home, Moore was forced to live on the streets and find food in trashcans.

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