WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court set aside a death sentence on Tuesday for a Texas inmate who as a teenager struggled to tell time and name the days of the week, concluding he should not be executed in light of his mental disability.
The 5-3 decision is the latest in which the justices restricted the use of the death penalty for convicted murderers who have a significant intellectual disability.
Three years ago, the justices faulted Florida authorities for relying on a standard of an IQ score of 70 to decide who is and is not mentally disabled.
In Tuesday’s decision, they faulted Texas judges for disregarding “current medical standards” in deciding who qualifies for the exemption.
Washington attorney Clifford Sloan, who represented the Texas defendant, said the court “had reaffirmed that all persons with an intellectual disability are exempt for execution,” and its opinion “sensibly directed Texas courts to be informed by the medical community’s current diagnostic framework before imposing our society’s gravest sentence.”
His client, Bobby James Moore, has been on death row in Texas since 1980 for shooting and killing a store clerk in a botched robbery in Houston. He was then 20 years old.
But Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said it was apparent from Moore’s early years that he had a severe disability.