What Last Week’s Supreme Court Opinion May Tell Us about the Current Court

Last week, the Supreme Court issued a per curiam opinion summarily reversing the Texas Court of Criminal appeals and finding that a death row inmate has an intellectual disability. The case doesn’t break new doctrinal ground but it offers some possible insights about how several Justices on the newly constituted Court are positioned on capital cases. The case. The case is Moore v. Texas. It began when the defendant shot a grocery store clerk in the head during a robbery. The defendant was tried capitally and was sentenced to death. On collateral review, he contended that he had an intellectual disability and so was not eligible for the death penalty, and a Texas trial court agreed. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed, applying a standard partly of its own creation that focused on factors like whether the defendant could formulate plans and could respond competently to questions. In 2017, the Supreme Court reviewed the case, found that the standard applied by the Court of Criminal Appeals was improper, and remanded with instructions to abide by clinically accepted standards regarding what constitutes an intellectual disability. I blogged about the 2017 litigation here. The Texas Court of Criminal appeals, stating that it was applying the clinical definition of intellectual disability, again ruled that the defendant was not intellectually disabled. The Supreme Court granted certiorari and reversed per curiam without oral argument. It found that the Texas appellate court had, in “too many instances . . . repeat[ed] the analysis we previously found [...]