Supreme Court: Texas Used Outdated Standards In Death Row Case

The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that Texas applied the wrong standards when it decided that an inmate on death row was mentally competent and could be executed.

Bobby James Moore killed a store clerk in Houston in a 1980 robbery, and his case has wound its way through appeals courts for years. Writing the decision for the court, which ruled 5 t0 3, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the Supreme Court had given leeway to states in deciding such cases but that the leeway was not without limits.

"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why it applies current medical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability in other contexts, yet clings to superseded standards when an individual’s life is at stake," Ginsburg wrote. She was joined by Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, because it ignored scientific advances, created “an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed,” the Supreme Court said in the opinion.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dissented from the decision, as did Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Cliff Sloan, Moore's attorney, said the Supreme Court stated that current medical standards must be utilized in judging whether a death row inmate is intellectually disabled and can thus be executed.

“The Supreme Court has sensibly directed Texas courts to be informed by the medical community’s current diagnostic framework before imposing our society’s gravest sentence,” Sloan said, as reported by the Austin-American Statesman.

A Texas state district judge recommended in 2014 that Moore's death sentence be overturned, based on the finding that the inmate was intellectually disabled — his IQ was determined to be below 71. Moore failed first grade twice and failed every grade after that; he dropped out of high school in his freshman year. The Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the judge's claim, ruling that the lower court had used inadequate standards of intellectual disability.

Texas's method of determining intellectual disability has been referred to as the "Of Mice and Men" standard.

In February, the Supreme Court blocked the execution of Duane Buck, another inmate on Texas's death row.

— Image of Bobby James Moore courtesy Texas Department of Criminal Justice