Moore v. Texas (2017)
| Moore v. Texas | |
|---|---|
| Argued November 29, 2016 Decided March 28, 2017 | |
| Full case name | Bobby James Moore, Petitioner v. Texas |
| Citations | 581 U.S. ___ (more) 137 S. Ct. 1039; 197 L. Ed. 2d 416 |
| Argument | Oral argument |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Ex parte Moore, 470 S.W.3d 481 (Tex. Crim. App. 2015); cert. granted, 136 S. Ct. 2407 (2016). |
| Subsequent | Ex parte Moore, 548 S.W.3d 552 (Tex. Crim. App. 2018); reversed and remanded, Moore v. Texas, 586 U.S. ___ (2019) |
| Holding | |
| When deciding if an inmate on death row is qualified as "intellectually disabled", as under Atkins v. Virginia (2002), courts may not ignore dominant medical guidelines. Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed and remanded. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Ginsburg, joined by Kennedy, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan |
| Dissent | Roberts, joined by Thomas, Alito |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. Amend. VIII | |
Moore v. Texas, 137 S. Ct. 1039 (2017), is a United States Supreme Court decision about the death penalty and intellectual disability. The court held that contemporary clinical standards determine what an intellectual disability is, and held that even milder forms of intellectual disability may bar a person from being sentenced to death due to the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The case clarified two earlier cases, Atkins v. Virginia (2002) and Hall v. Florida (2014).