SCOTUS Will Review Case on Intellectual Disabilities and the Death Penalty

Bobby James Moore was convicted of murdering a grocery store clerk in Texas in 1980. He says his intellectual disabilities should bar him from execution.

Initially, the Supreme Court said they would examine two issues regarding Moore’s case, but they quickly reversed themselves and said they’d only look at one.

The justices also announced Monday that they would review another high-profile Texas death penalty case, in which Duane Buck's sentencing hearing was marred by overtly racist testimony, which was allowed to influence the jurors' decision. 

More art than science

Last year, an appeals court threw out a lower court's ruling that Moore was intellectually disabled and, therefore, ineligible for capital punishment. The lower court finding of disability was based on current medical standards, but the appeals court threw out the medical community’s consensus and relied instead on a standard that had some legal precedent behind it but no science. 

“The court had concocted a non-scientific set of characteristics, drawn in part from the characteristics of the fictional character, Lennie, from [the John Steinbeck novel] ‘Of Mice and Men,’” said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center. “So, relying on the characteristics of a severely mentally disabled fictional character, the court overturned the grant of relief and reinstated Bobby Moore’s death penalty.”

To prove that a defendant’s disabilities are too severe to allow for execution, they need to have “subaverage intellectual functioning” and a lack of “adaptive functioning,” meaning the way a person operates in normal society. The condition also has to be developmental, as opposed to the result of some sort of brain damage later in life.

The medical community uses an IQ of 70 as a rough guide but, according to Dunham, experts try to account for various factors that can influence test scores. Two years ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy shamed Florida for trying to adhere to a strict 70-point IQ threshold for execution, saying, “Florida seeks to execute a man because he scored a 71 instead of a 70 on an IQ test.” The Court decided in that case that the interpretation of IQ scores should not be too rigid.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the lower court that Moore has an intellectual disability -- even though it's not as severe as that of Lennie in "Of Mice and Men" -- he’ll get a new sentence of life without parole.

Moore’s appeal had also asked the Supreme Court to rule on whether a 35-year stay on death row, in solitary confinement, constituted cruel and unusual punishment. This would have been a “first impression” question that the Court has never ruled on before. A legal precedent on how long is too long to keep a prisoner on death row would have had huge ramifications.

In any case, though the justices initially said they would consider Moore’s full claim, they reversed themselves two hours later, saying they would only consider the first question, leaving aside the matter of how long is too long to keep someone on death row.

How will an incomplete Supreme Court respond?

The Supreme Court has been one member short since the death of Antonin Scalia in February due to the Senate’s refusal to consider President Obama’s nominee to replace him. An eight-member Court leaves open the possibility of a 4-4 tie, which has already happened on a number of occasions.

By the time the Court is ready to issue a ruling on the Moore case, as well as the Duane Buck case, there may well be a ninth justice. The briefs will likely be filed by fall, with an argument in the fall or early winter. It could be spring by the time a decision comes – and by then there will be a new president in the Oval Office, and the Senate will have no excuse to keep holding up a nominee to complete the Court.

Of course, the justices don’t always break along ideological lines. The most recent Supreme Court case involving the death penalty for people with intellectual disabilities did, however, split 5-4.

Two more related Supreme Court decisions Monday

In addition to the Moore case and the Duane Buck case involving racist testimony, the Supreme Court took on two other death penalty issues Monday.

First, in a case with echoes of Bobby James Moore, the Supreme Court found that the state of Louisiana was wrong to withhold funds and an evidentiary hearing from a man who was trying to prove his own intellectual disability. And second, the Court directed the Alabama Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of its death penalty law. Alabama is one of just three states (Florida and Delaware are the other two) that allow the death penalty to go through even if the jury isn’t unanimous in recommending it.