Bourgeois v. Watson
The Supreme Court refused to pause Alfred Bourgeois's federal execution and declined to hear his appeal, allowing the execution to proceed despite his claim that current medical standards would classify him as intellectually disabled.
Two justices dissented, arguing that the Federal Death Penalty Act bars executing anyone who is intellectually disabled under current clinical standards, and that the Court should have resolved that important legal question before allowing the execution to go forward.
How it got here: A federal district court found Bourgeois made a strong showing of intellectual disability; the Seventh Circuit reversed on procedural grounds; Bourgeois then sought an emergency stay and certiorari from the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Alfred Bourgeois, a federal death row inmate with an IQ between 70 and 75, argued that he is intellectually disabled under current clinical standards and that the Federal Death Penalty Act therefore forbids his execution. A Texas federal court had found in 2011 that he was not intellectually disabled, but that earlier ruling relied heavily on the judge's own lay observations about his behavior — a method both the Supreme Court and the medical community have since rejected as unreliable.
The question before the Court
Can the federal government execute a prisoner who may be intellectually disabled under today's medical standards, even though an earlier court found him not disabled under the standards of that time?
The Court's answer
The Court denied Bourgeois's emergency request to pause his execution and also declined to take up his appeal, issuing a one-line order with no explanation. The practical effect was to let the execution proceed.
Two justices would have halted the execution and heard full arguments. They argued that the Federal Death Penalty Act's prohibition on executing intellectually disabled people must be measured against current medical standards — not standards that prevailed nearly a decade earlier — and that this unresolved legal question was serious enough to require an answer before Bourgeois was put to death. The Court's denial is not a ruling on whether the Federal Death Penalty Act requires current standards or on whether Bourgeois is, in fact, intellectually disabled.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Federal prisoners on death row who may be intellectually disabled under today's medical standards — but were found not disabled under older, now-discredited standards — have no clear path to a new hearing. As the medical community's understanding of intellectual disability continues to evolve, courts may apply outdated criteria, potentially allowing executions the Federal Death Penalty Act was designed to prevent.
What changes now
With the stay denied, Alfred Bourgeois's execution proceeded. The underlying legal question — whether the Federal Death Penalty Act requires courts to apply current medical standards for intellectual disability at the time of execution, and whether changed diagnostic standards can open the door to a new habeas petition — remains unresolved. Other federal death row inmates who raised or may raise similar claims could face the same procedural barrier the Seventh Circuit applied here.
What this does not decide
The Court's one-line denial does not decide whether the Federal Death Penalty Act requires current diagnostic standards or whether Bourgeois was actually intellectually disabled. A denial of a stay and cert petition carries no precedential weight on the underlying legal questions.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Sotomayor
Justice Sotomayor argued that the Federal Death Penalty Act's present-tense prohibition on executing intellectually disabled people requires courts to apply current medical standards at the time of execution — not decade-old standards now rejected by both the Supreme Court and the medical community. She contended Bourgeois's earlier habeas petition was inadequate to settle the question under today's clinical criteria, making a new petition appropriate. She would have granted certiorari to resolve this recurring issue before allowing the execution to proceed.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA) flatly prohibits carrying out a death sentence on 'a person who is mentally retarded' — language written in the present tense, focused on the moment of execution rather than the moment of sentencing. The dissent argued this phrasing requires courts to ask whether someone is intellectually disabled by today's medical standards at the time they are to be executed, not solely by whatever standards were in effect at an earlier court proceeding.
- A 2011 federal court found Bourgeois was not intellectually disabled, but that court relied heavily on its own lay observations — for example, that Bourgeois graduated from high school and could hold a conversation — rather than on current clinical methods. The Supreme Court had since ruled in two Moore v. Texas decisions that relying on such lay stereotypes is legal error, and the medical community broadly rejected those criteria as well.
- Because a different court had already ruled on his intellectual disability claim, federal habeas law — which generally bars prisoners from filing a second petition attacking the same conviction or sentence — stood in the way of Bourgeois raising the issue again. The Seventh Circuit held that procedural bar applied and reversed the lower court's finding that Bourgeois had made a strong showing of intellectual disability.
- The dissent argued, however, that the federal habeas statute contains a savings clause allowing a new petition when the first was 'inadequate or ineffective to test the legality' of the prisoner's detention. Because the 2011 proceeding used materially different and now-discredited diagnostic standards, Bourgeois contended his first petition was inadequate to measure whether he 'is' intellectually disabled in the legally relevant sense — as of the date his execution would be carried out.
- The Court, without explanation, denied both the stay and the cert petition, accepting (implicitly) the Seventh Circuit's conclusion that the procedural bar on successive habeas petitions applied. The dissent said that ruling risked allowing the execution of someone who is demonstrably intellectually disabled under current standards, in direct violation of the FDPA's plain text.