Can a Person With Intellectual Disability Be Executed? Moore v. Texas

Update (October 2026): Shortly after this post was written, the Supreme Court ruled for Bobby Moore. On February 19, 2019, it held that the Texas court's finding that he was not intellectually disabled could not stand under the Court's 2017 decision. Moore v. Texas, 139 S. Ct. 666 (2019) (per curiam). The Court did not rule on the separate question, discussed below, about the prosecutor's agreement.

A person with intellectual disability cannot be executed. The Supreme Court held in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, that doing so violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. But Atkins left it to courts to decide who counts as intellectually disabled.

Moore v. Texas is about how courts must make that call: what factors a court must weigh in deciding whether a prisoner is intellectually disabled and so cannot be executed. The case also raised whether an execution is cruel and unusual when both the defense and the prosecution agree the prisoner is intellectually disabled.

What Happened in Moore v. Texas

Capital Punishment

Bobby Moore was convicted of capital murder for shooting a supermarket employee during an armed robbery he took part in when he was 20. Texas sentenced him to death, and he spent decades challenging that sentence based on his intellectual disability. He first asked the Supreme Court to review his case in 2015.

A Texas trial court heard from doctors and family members and found Moore was intellectually disabled under current medical standards. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected that finding. It used its own test, called the Briseno factors, and held Moore could be executed.

The Supreme Court's First Ruling

In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in Moore's favor. Moore v. Texas, 137 S. Ct. 1039 (2017). It held the Briseno factors were not a valid way to decide intellectual disability, because they relied on lay perceptions instead of current medical standards.

The case went back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. That court again found Moore was not intellectually disabled.

The Second Appeal

Moore went back to the Supreme Court. By then, even the local prosecutor agreed that Moore was intellectually disabled and should not be executed.

His appeal also raised whether it is cruel and unusual to execute someone when the prosecutor agrees he is intellectually disabled. As noted in the update, the Supreme Court ruled for Moore without deciding that question.

Why This Matters

When this post was first written, the original article saw the second appeal as a "second bite at the apple" for the Supreme Court to confirm that courts must rely on medical diagnoses. It also called the 2017 ruling, that the state court's outdated standards violated Moore's Eighth Amendment rights, a positive development for defendants' constitutional rights.

The Moore decisions make clear that courts must follow current medical standards, not lay opinions, when deciding whether someone is intellectually disabled. That gives people facing execution a firmer basis to argue they cannot be executed when medical professionals have found they are intellectually disabled.

The prosecutor's role matters too. If courts give weight to a prosecutor's agreement that a defendant is intellectually disabled, defense lawyers may be able to encourage prosecutors to say so on the record in future cases. The Supreme Court did not decide this point.

Finally, the case shows that winning an appeal does not always end the fight. Moore won in 2017 and still had to return to the Supreme Court.

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