Moore v. Texas

Brief Filed: 8/16
Court: United States Supreme Court
Year of Decision: 2017

Read full-text amicus briefopens in new window (PDF, 111KB)

This case involves the question of whether a state can only use a non-clinical judicially developed means of diagnosing intellectual disability or must be guided by consensus professional standards for diagnosis.

Death Penalty

Texas has refused to use the current diagnostic approach to intellectual disability (ID) — which represents a broad professional consensus among those who work in this area of assessment — but rather is using a 23 year old approach which is understood to be more restrictive in identifying ID. The District Court found that under the principles of Atkins the state had to employ the current professional approach to diagnosis but the Fifth Circuit reversed and upheld the state’s position that it has the discretion to use the old standard. The newer approach embodied in American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities definitions and the The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders places less emphasis on IQ numbers, recognizes structural equation modeling and other statistical aspects of IQ testing, and focuses more on individual clinical evaluation of adaptive functioning.

Joined by the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Academy of Psychology and the Law, APA’s brief in Moore explains in detail the professional consensus around current clinical standards for diagnosis of intellectual disability, including the need and means to assess concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning and discusses the lack of scientific evidence to support the outdated and non-clinical approach that Texas prosecutors are still advancing. Two of our consulting experts in the Hall brief, Greg Olley and Karen Salekin, provided essential input on this brief. The case was argued Nov. 29.

On March 28, 2017, in a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that Texas erred in using a decades-old lay interpretation of intellectual disability to determine whether defendants faced the death penalty. Instead, the court held that in determining eligibility for the death penalty, courts must rely upon modern scientific clinical standards of assessment of intellectual and developmental disabilities and cannot substitute lay stereotypes of intellectual disability. The court further concluded, relying in part upon APA’s amicus brief, that a person’s personality disorder or mental health disorder can co-occur with an intellectual disability diagnosis, and does not negate one. The court remanded the case for further proceedings.