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Case Comment: Moore v. Texas

“The States are laboratories for experimentation, but those experiments may not deny the basic dignity the Constitution protects.” The application of established clinical diagnosis of intellectual disability in the context of capital punishment cases has been clarified by the Supreme Court of the United States of America inMoore v. Texas. The Court referred to its recent Eighth Amendment jurisprudence in this area and reiterated that assessment of intellectual disability should be informed by the medical community. The case is also important in ensuring greater parity of the approach of states with federal standards to avoid arbitrary and inconsistent decision making in administering the most draconian penalty. The authors consider that the Court’s decision aligns with the approach taken in the medical and legal professions in many jurisdictions outside of the United States with respect to the currency of clinical guidelines in a judicial context. This article provides an overview of the constitutional position relating to the execution of persons who are intellectually disabled. The procedural history in Moore will be set out, followed by an analysis of the arguments presented before the Court on behalf of Moore and the Court’s decision on each.