Supreme Court declines to hear Texas intellectual-disability death penalty case

The Supreme Court on June 22 declined to hear the appeal of a Texas death-row inmate whose attorneys argue he is intellectually disabled and so constitutionally barred from execution. The refusal leaves his sentence intact and clears the way toward an execution.

The Supreme Court has held since 2002 that executing people with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment, but it has left states substantial room to set the standards for making that determination. Texas’s approach to those findings has drawn repeated scrutiny, and by turning the case away without comment the justices decline to revisit how the protection is applied.

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