Page:Bobby James Moore v. Texas.pdf/2

2 write, Moore could not keep up with lessons. Often, he was separated from the rest of the class and told to draw pictures. Moore’s father, teachers, and peers called him ‘stupid’ for his slow reading and speech. After failing every subject in the ninth grade, Moore dropped out of high school. Cast out of his home, he survived on the streets, eating from trash cans, even after two bouts of food poisoning.” Ibid. (citations omitted). On the basis of this and other evidence, the trial court found that Moore had intellectual disability and thus was ineligible for the death penalty under Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304 (2002). App. to Pet. for Cert. 310a–311a. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed that determination, Ex parte Moore I, 470 S. W. 3d 481, and we reviewed its decision, Moore, 581 U. S. ___.

At the outset of our opinion, we recognized as valid the three underlying legal criteria that both the trial court and appeals court had applied. Id., at ___–___ (slip op., at 3–4) (citing American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, Intellectual Disability: Definition, Classification, and Systems of Supports (11th ed. 2010) (AAIDD–11); American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. 2013) (DSM–5)). To make a finding of intellectual disability, a court must see: (1) deficits in intellectual functioning—primarily a test-related criterion, see DSM–5, at 37; (2) adaptive deficits, “assessed using both clinical evaluation and individualized… measures,” ibid.; and (3) the onset of these deficits while the defendant was still a minor, id., at 38. With respect to the first criterion, we wrote that Moore’s intellectual testing indicated his was a borderline case, but that he had demonstrated sufficient intellectual-functioning deficits to require consideration of the second criterion–adaptive functioning. Moore, 581