Ex Parte Blaine Milam

Filed: July 18, 2024

Court: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Overview: Amicus brief alongside other disability rights organizations arguing that Supreme Court precedent requires courts to refer to clinical standards when determining intellectual disability in death penalty cases.

Excerpt: “In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002), the United States Supreme Court held that executing defendants with intellectual disability violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Subsequently, in Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014), in accord with the clinical consensus, the United States Supreme Court rejected an arbitrary cutoff for intelligence quotient (“IQ”) scores in making the intellectual disability determination and emphasized the importance of courts’ adherence to the appropriate clinical standards in their analysis. In Moore v. Texas, 137 S. Ct. 1039 (2017) (hereinafter “Moore I”), the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments requires that adjudications of intellectual disability in death penalty cases be “informed by the views of medical experts” and that the non-clinical factors adopted in Ex parte Briseño, 135 S.W.3d 1 (Tex. Crim. App. 2004) may no longer be used because they create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed. Following the Supreme Court’s lead, this Court has held that Texas courts ‘must be informed by the current medical diagnostic framework for assessing intellectual disability’ when determining whether a person has intellectual disability. Petetan v. State, 622 S.W.3d 321, 357 (Tex. Crim. App. 2021); Moore I, 137 S. Ct. at 1044. Courts must insist on the use of the clinical framework in evaluating Atkins claims. Otherwise, they risk violating the Eighth Amendment and unconstitutionally sentencing individuals to death.”

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