Moore v. Texas - Remand (2018)

Brief Filed: 11/17
Court: Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas
Year of Decision: 2018

Full-text amicus brief (PDF, 535KB)opens in new window

At issue in this case is 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

This is a follow-on brief to the amicus brief filed by APA in the U.S. Supreme Court Case Moore v. Texas, which was remanded to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) for further proceedings. The case involves whether a state can only use a nonclinical judicially developed means of diagnosing intellectual disability or must be guided by consensus professional standards for diagnosis.

APA’s brief encourages the CCA to adopt a test that comported with consensus clinical views on intellectual disability and that did not distort the assessment of deficits in adaptive functioning.

In a significant turn of events, the State of Texas filed a brief before the CCA conceding that Moore is intellectually disabled under the standards set forth in the DSM-5 and the Supreme Court’s case law. Notwithstanding that concession, the CCA issued a remarkable decision on June 6, 2018 that (1) adopted the DSM-5 framework for evaluating intellectual disability but (2) concluded that Moore had not demonstrated that he was in fact intellectually disabled under the DSM-5 framework. Three Justices dissented, citing twice to the APA’s amicus brief submitted to CCA, when explaining how the majority’s approach departed from prevailing clinical standards.