Intellectually disabled Texas prisoner granted parole after nearly four decades on death row in Houston case

A man who served nearly four decades on death row for a 1980 capital murder conviction in Houston - a landmark case that changed how Texas evaluates intellectually disabled inmates sentenced to death - on Monday was granted parole, according to The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Bobby James Moore, 60, spent nearly 40 years on death row until last year, when his sentence was changed to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court for the second time reviewed his case. The justices agreed that Moore was so mentally disabled it would be unconstitutional to put him to death,.

Parole board spokesman Raymond Estrada said Moore will be released “upon processing by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.” He did not respond to requests to elaborate on Monday’s decision.

State Sen. John Whitmire, who spoke to board representatives, said the decision was made “after reviewing his time served and completion of courses and strong support when re-entering.” Whitmire said the board also considered Moore’s disability and young age, 20, at the time of the offense.

“Also strong support by his family and community support,” said Whitmire, chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “He fit what they look for in a candidate for parole.”

Despite his life sentence, Moore was eligible for release because his crime occurred before Texas introduced the option of life without parole.

In April 1980, a 20-year-old Moore was one of three men involved in a botched store robbery near Houston’s Memorial Park. He shot and killed elderly clerk James McCarble. By July of that year, he was sentenced to death and booked into prison.

Although it’s not constitutional to execute intellectually disabled prisoners, for years Texas relied on a nonclinical test to evaluate mental capacity, according to earlier reporting in the Houston Chronicle. The test, named after plaintiff Jose Briseño, asked seven questions to determine intellectual disability. It famously used Lennie, a character from John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice and Men,” as an example of someone most Texans would agree should be exempt from the death penalty.

Even under that standard, a Harris County court in 2014 determined that Moore’s execution would be unconstitutional. He had failed every grade in school, did not understand the days of the week by age 13, and even as an adult fell below the standard for being able to live independently, according to earlier reports.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals pushed back on that 2014 ruling, giving way to a years-long legal struggle between the state appeals court and attorneys who argued that Moore was not fit for execution.

The first time his case made it to the Supreme Court in 2017, the justices ruled that Texas did not properly evaluate Moore’s disability. They said the Briseño standard violated the constitution and ordered Texas to use more modern medical standards.

Despite that decision, the state appeals court continued to move forward with Moore’s death sentence. The appeals court also agreed to come up with new standards to measure intellectual disabilities, paving the way for other prisoners to get off death row over mental capacity concerns.

The change did nothing to spare Moore. It wasn’t until 2019, the second time the Supreme Court sided with Moore, that the state appeals court agreed to uphold the higher court ruling.

Source: houstonchronicle.com, Julian Gill, June 8, 2020

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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde