{"id":18960,"date":"2017-03-28T20:43:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T20:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.catholicnewsagency.com\/news\/supreme-court-rejects-texas-standards-for-executing-the-intellectually-disabled-91108\/"},"modified":"2017-03-28T20:43:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-28T20:43:00","slug":"supreme-court-rejects-texas-standards-for-executing-the-intellectually-disabled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/catholicnews\/2017\/03\/supreme-court-rejects-texas-standards-for-executing-the-intellectually-disabled\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court rejects Texas’ standards for executing the intellectually disabled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/p>\n

Washington D.C., Mar 28, 2017 \/ 02:43 pm (CNA\/EWTN News<\/a>).- In a death penalty case with national implications, the Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a Texas court ruling that a man with possible intellectual disabilities was eligible for execution.<\/p>\n

The Catholic Mobilizing Network hailed the Court\u2019s ruling in Moore v. Texas <\/em>as \u201cthe needed step towards justice for some of the most vulnerable in our society\u201d and a \u201cvictory for life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn affirming a person with intellectual disabilities should not be executed, the Court made it clear that states must uphold the needs of all of its citizens,\u201d said Karen Clifton, executive director of the network. \u201cCMN applauds the Court for calling attention to this grave injustice and demanding that we do better to provide justice for all involved in the legal system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Moore v. Texas<\/em>, a man Bobby James Moore had been convicted in 1980 \u2013 and again in 2001 on a retrial \u2013 of robbing a convenience store and killing an employee. He was given a death sentence.<\/p>\n

A state habeas court, however, said that Moore met the clinical criteria for being intellectually disabled \u2013 which would exempt someone from execution under the Eighth Amendment, as the Supreme Court had ruled in Atkins v. Virginia<\/em> in 2002.<\/p>\n

With Moore, the habeas court used the standard \u201cthree-prong\u201d test to determine intellectual disability, which is part of the clinical consensus on the matter, the Supreme Court found.<\/p>\n

This test looked for \u201cintellectual functioning deficits,\u201d or an IQ score of around 70 adjusted for error, \u201cadaptive functioning deficits,\u201d and whether these deficits began to show when the person was still a minor.<\/p>\n

A Texas criminal appeals court, however, disregarded five of Moore\u2019s seven IQ scores that factored into the habeas court\u2019s ruling, keeping only scores of 74 and 78 that Moore received in 1989 and 1973, respectively, and \u201cdiscounted the lower end of the standard-error range associated with those scores,\u201d as the Supreme Court\u2019s opinion noted.<\/p>\n

The appeals court ruled that according to an earlier medical standard of intellectual disability \u2013 which was in place before Moore was convicted in his 2001 re-trial \u2013 as well as according to the state\u2019s \u201cBriseno factors\u201d test, Moore was eligible for the death penalty.<\/p>\n

The Briseno factors test is a standard used by Texas in addition to the three-pronged standard for disability. The test includes questions like whether someone is able to lie, and if their neighbors thought they were disabled as a child. Critics have insisted that the factors are non-clinical.<\/p>\n

Critics also note that the Briseno factors are not used to determine one\u2019s eligibility for other state programs like social services. They have been used to deem others in Texas fit for the death penalty, including, in 2012, a man who scored a 61 on an IQ test.<\/p>\n

Moore\u2019s case was eventually appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a 5-3 decision on Tuesday, the Court overturned the criminal appeals court\u2019s decision, saying the Briseno factors were outside of the clinical consensus means of evaluating one\u2019s mental capacity and adding that the appeals court strayed from Supreme Court precedent in its decision.<\/p>\n

Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said that although the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia <\/em>that executing an intellectually disabled person violated the Eighth Amendment\u2019s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, states could still determine one\u2019s eligibility for the death penalty so long as their standards were within the clinical consensus.<\/p>\n

Some states, however, thought this decision gave them broader discretion than was warranted to determine disability, he said. States like Texas and Florida used non-clinical standards, which led to later cases like Moore<\/em> and Hall v. Florida <\/em>where the Court found those standards unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think what the Court intended in Atkins<\/em>, that discretion was not set up so that states could nullify Atkins<\/em> by creating inappropriate hurdles for proving intellectual disability,\u201d Dunham noted.<\/p>\n

The majority opinion in Moore<\/em>, authored by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, \u201csaid the state\u2019s discretion is not unfettered,\u201d Dunham said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the members of the Court agreed that the intellectual disability determination needs to be informed by the diagnostic framework.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 Briseno standard for evaluating intellectual disability is \u201can invention of the CCA [Criminal Court of Appeals] untied to any acknowledged source,\u201d the Court stated, saying the standards were an \u201coutlier\u201d as other states had not adopted them and Texas did not even use them for cases other than the death penalty.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot aligned with the medical community\u2019s information, and drawing no strength from our precedent, the Briseno factors \u2018creat[e] an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed\u2019,\u201d the opinion stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMild levels of intellectual disability, although they may fall outside Texas citizens\u2019 consensus, nevertheless remain intellectual disabilities,\u201d they insisted.<\/p>\n

The dissent, written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, admitted that the Briseno factors \u201care an unacceptable method of enforcing the guarantee of Atkins<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Roberts added that he did not think the appeals court \u201cerred as to Moore\u2019s intellectual functioning.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the Court majority set about determining what was the \u201cmedical consensus about intellectual disability\u201d when that judgment should be left to \u201cclinicians,\u201d Roberts insisted.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the Court sent a strong message not only to Texas but to other states who craft their testing for intellectual disability outside of the clinical consensus, Dunham said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis case, Moore <\/em>and Hall <\/em>read together, sends a clear message. That is, if you follow the clinical definitions of intellectual disability, you aren\u2019t going to have these kinds of problems. When you start substituting lay stereotypes and myths for the clinical criteria, you\u2019re risking having your court judgments overturned.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision sheds light on one of the many broken aspects of the death penalty. Today\u2019s Supreme Court ruling is another step towards justice for all life,\u201d Clifton stated.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington D.C., Mar 28, 2017 \/ 02:43 pm (CNA\/EWTN News).- In a death penalty case with national implications, the Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned a Texas court ruling that a man with possible intellectual disabilities was eligible for execution.<\/p>\n

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