Estimated read time: Less than a minute
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has accepted a second U.S. Supreme Court decision that a 60-year-old death row inmate is intellectually disabled and cannot be executed.
The appeals court on Wednesday wrote that the Supreme Court's second ruling that convicted killer Bobby James Moore cannot be put to death because of mental disability "is determinative." It says there's no alternative but to commute the sentence to life in prison.
The appeals court in June 2018 found James mentally competent for execution, despite an earlier Supreme Court ruling that his intellectual capacity was improperly assessed and agreement by prosecutors that he shouldn't qualify for the death penalty.
Moore has been on death row since 1980 for the shooting death of 72-year-old Houston grocery store clerk James McCarble during a robbery.
Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
