Moore v. Texas
The Supreme Court put the executions of two Texas men, Curtis Moore and Brian Edward Davis, on hold while it considered a related case about whether executing intellectually disabled people is unconstitutional.
Three justices — Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas — publicly dissented, arguing the stays rewarded last-minute claims that Texas courts had already rejected on solid procedural grounds.
How it got here: Texas courts repeatedly dismissed the inmates' state habeas petitions as an abuse of the writ; each then asked the Supreme Court to stay his execution pending its decision in a related case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Curtis Moore and Brian Edward Davis were both sentenced to death in Texas for separate brutal murders. Years into their appeals, each man filed a last-minute state habeas petition claiming for the first time that he was mentally retarded and that executing him would violate the Eighth Amendment, pointing to IQ test scores from years earlier that had not been used at trial.
The question before the Court
Should the Supreme Court pause the executions of two Texas death-row inmates who claimed, at the last minute, that they were too intellectually disabled to be executed?
Why it matters
The order kept two men alive on death row while the Court decided a separate, pending case on whether executing intellectually disabled people violates the Constitution. The dissent's sharp objection signaled a broader fight over how much leeway death-row inmates get to raise new claims on the eve of execution, and how much deference state procedural rules deserve.
What changes now
The stays keep Moore and Davis off death row while their petitions for certiorari are pending. If certiorari is denied, the stays automatically end; if granted, they last until the Court issues its mandate. The underlying question — whether executing intellectually disabled people is unconstitutional — was being decided separately in Atkins v. Virginia, which would likely determine the fate of these petitions.
What this does not decide
The order does not resolve whether Moore or Davis is actually intellectually disabled, nor does it decide whether executing intellectually disabled people is unconstitutional — that question was pending separately in Atkins v. Virginia. It only pauses the executions temporarily.
Concurrences and dissents
Dissent — Justice Scalia
Justice Scalia argued the Court had no basis to grant these stays because the Texas courts' dismissals rested on adequate and independent state procedural grounds — the state's abuse-of-the-writ rule — which barred federal review altogether. He contended the inmates showed no cause for their procedural default and no colorable claim of retardation, since their own trial-era IQ scores were in the normal range, and warned that granting last-minute stays like these would invite abuse of the execution process.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The dissent explained that a stay of execution is appropriate only when there is a reasonable probability four Justices would vote to hear the case, a significant possibility the Court would reverse the ruling below, and a likelihood the inmate would suffer irreparable harm without the stay.
- The dissent invoked the rule that the Supreme Court will not review a federal question if a state court's ruling rests on a state-law ground that is both independent of federal law and adequate by itself to support the judgment — a rule treated as jurisdictional on direct review.
- Texas's abuse-of-the-writ rule, which bars successive habeas petitions raising claims that could have been raised earlier, was described as a well-established and consistently applied state procedural bar, making it an adequate state ground.
- The dissent argued that whether a claim was 'previously unavailable' under Texas law turns on Texas law, not federal law, making the state court's ruling independent of any federal question, and noted the mental-retardation claim had actually been raised in Texas courts years before either inmate's first habeas petition.
- Because the inmates' trial records already contained IQ scores in the normal range and no juror had been asked to consider retardation, the dissent concluded there was no realistic chance the Eighth Amendment claim could have changed the jury's answers to the special sentencing questions.
- The dissent concluded that under existing law there was no significant possibility the Court would ultimately reverse the Texas courts' rulings, making the stays unwarranted.