WASHINGTON (WBAP/KLIF News) — The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over Texas’s unusual and controversial method of determining whether a condemned prisoner is mentally competent for execution.
USA Today reports this is the third death penalty case to reach the high court this term with several others under consideration. While the number of executions in the U.S. has declined sharply in the past 25 years voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma decided to retain or restore capital punishment in the recent election.
The Texas case before the court concerned the state’s unique way of determining who is intellectually disabled. Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller argued that the state is well within “the national consensus” but Clifford Sloan, the lawyer representing death row inmate Bobby James Moore, strongly disagreed, accusing Texas of using “lay stereotypes” of intellectual disability such as the character Lennie in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.”
The justices appear to be sharply divided and are expected to side with the plaintiff. Moore was convicted of killing a grocery clerk in 1980.
