WASHINGTON – The American Psychological Association praised the U.S. Supreme Court for invalidating Texas’s use of an outdated means of determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases.
“APA is gratified with the holding that, in determining eligibility for the death penalty, courts must rely upon modern scientific clinical standards of assessment of intellectual and developmental disabilities and cannot substitute lay stereotypes of intellectual disability,” said APA President Antonio E. Puente, PhD. “We are also pleased that the Supreme Court relied in part upon APA’s amicus brief to conclude that a person’s personality disorder or mental health disorder can co-occur with an intellectual disability diagnosis, and does not negate one.”
In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that Texas erred in using a decades-old lay interpretation of of intellectual disability to determine whether defendants faced the death penalty. The Supreme Court held in 2002, in Atkins v. Virginia, that people convicted of murder who are intellectually disabled cannot be executed.
APA, along with the American Psychiatric Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the American Academy of Psychology and the Law, filed an amicus brief in the case Moore v. Texas. The brief, which was cited in the court’s majority opinion, explained in detail the professional consensus around current clinical standards for diagnosis of intellectual disability, including the need and means to assess concurrent deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning and discussed the lack of scientific evidence to support the outdated and non-clinical approach that Texas prosecutors were using.
“This is another example of the important role APA plays in assisting courts in applying modern psychological science to intellectual and developmental disabilities, and the impact of these disabilities on the culpability of criminal defendants,” Puente said.
The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. APA’s membership includes nearly 115,700 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people’s lives.