WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court is ending a long legal fight by ruling that a Texas death row inmate is intellectually disabled and thus may not be executed.
The justices ruled 6-3 on Tuesday in the case of inmate Bobby James Moore.
Moore had been sentenced to death for the 1980 shotgun slaying of a Houston grocery store clerk.
His lawyers argued for years that Moore was intellectually disabled, but Texas’ top criminal appeals court rejected those claims, even after the Supreme Court strongly suggested in 2017 that Moore could not be executed because of his intellectual limitations.
In a twist, the Houston district attorney agreed with Moore that he should be spared the death penalty. Houston prosecutors originally persuaded a jury to sentence Moore to death.
