Supreme Court Grants Certiorari in Texas Death Penalty Case

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a petition for certiorari prepared by a team from our Washington, D.C. and New York offices. The case involves Bobby James Moore, an inmate who has been imprisoned on death row in Texas for over 35 years, during almost half of which he has been held in solitary confinement. A Texas trial court granted Moore's habeas petition, concluding that he had established that he was intellectually disabled and that the Eighth Amendment therefore prohibited his execution. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed that decision, holding that the trial court had erred by relying on current medical standards governing intellectual disability rather than a superseded, 23-year-old standard. The Supreme Court agreed to review whether the Court of Criminal Appeals' ruling violated the Eighth Amendment.