A Brief Note On The Atkins Vs. Virginia Case

The death penalty, no matter your opinion on the practice of it, is a reality in thirty-one of the fifty states within America. With that being said, a group of people is exempt from being placed on death row due to the Atkins v. Virginia case; the mentally disabled. Bobby James Moore was convicted of capital murder in 1980. He shot a seventy-year-old store clerk in Houston, Texas and his sentence, affirmed on appeal, was execution. In 2001, after a court granted habeas, Moore argue that the Atkins v. Virginia case should apply to him. The court agreed he should not be executed, however, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas held that Moore failed to establish he was mentally handicapped based off of a 1992 definition of intellectual disability.
Within this list of rights is the Eighth Amendment which simply states “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted” [Benz]. The part of this amendment which pertains to the Moore case is the “cruel and unusual punishment” excerpt. It is common knowledge to not punish those who genuinely don't understand what they are doing, and this was reiterated in the Atkins v. Virginia case mentioned previously. The Atkins v. Virginia is a Supreme Court case that determined it was considered “cruel and unusual punishment” to execute a mentally challenged individual no matter how heinous the crime. Bobby Moore pled to the court that he was intellectually disabled and should not be executed. Even though the court agreed with Moore and declared him handicapped and therefore should not be executed for it would violate his Eighth Amendment right, the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas decided Moore was in fact not mentally challenged. The court concluded this by comparing Moore to an old definition of mental
A previous court case named Hall v. Florida set the precedent that a court can not compare the alleged criminal’s IQ to that of someone who is mentally challenged. Since an intelligence test can not be used, state governments are left to make their own determination of what conditions need to be met in order to be considered mentally disabled. Thus, Texas, although using an old definition, has the right to hold Bobby Moore to the standard which they have determined as legally “mentally retarded”. Another case which would compel the Supreme Court to let Texas make the decision of Bobby Moore being mentally competent enough to be executed is Patterson v. Dretke. In this case, Patterson was diagnosed with a mental illness, but the Texas court still deemed him competent enough to be put on death row. Since there has been an instance in the past where the court of Texas executed a mentally ill criminal, it set a precedent they could do the same with Bobby Moore; if they placed a intellectually disabled American on death row and it wasn’t a violation of the Eighth Amendment, Bobby Moore should be allowed to be executed. So, even if Bobby Moore is mentally ill, the Texas court can decide that he