WASHINGTON — The American Psychological Association commended the U.S. Supreme Court for reversing a Texas appeals court ruling on the grounds that it used outdated means for determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases.
This was the second time that the Supreme Court reversed a lower court decision in the case of Moore v. Texas.
“APA is pleased that the Supreme Court continued to uphold the need for modern, scientific standards for assessing intellectual and developmental disabilities, especially cases involving capital punishment,” said APA CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD. “We are gratified that the court again relied on psychological research to conclude that a personality disorder or mental health issue is not evidence that a person does not also have an intellectual disability.”
In Moore v. Texas, the Supreme Court found in 2017 that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals erred in using a decades-old lay interpretation of an intellectual disability in determining whether a defendant could face the death penalty. The Supreme Court had previously held that individuals with intellectual disabilities cannot be executed. The case was remanded to the Texas court for further consideration based on more scientifically valid methods. The Texas court reconsidered the appeal and reached the same basic conclusion as before.
APA, along with the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers and the American Academy of Psychology and the Law, filed an amicus briefopens in new window (PDF, 212KB) outlining the professional consensus around clinical standards for diagnosing intellectual disability. The Supreme Court cited the brief four times when it found that the Texas court’s new opinion “rests upon analysis too much of which too closely resembles what we previously found improper.”
The case has been remanded again to the Texas court for further review consistent with the 2017 opinion.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA's membership includes nearly 115,700 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives.