Texas man who spent nearly 40 years on death row released

HOUSTON — An intellectually disabled Texas man who served nearly 40 years on death row has been released from prison.

Bobby James Moore, 60, was released Aug. 6 and now lives with his brother, said Robert Hurst, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Moore was convicted in 1980 of capital murder for the shooting death of store clerk James McCarble during a robbery that April, the Houston Chronicle reported. Moore was 20 at the time.

His attorneys had argued that his execution would be unconstitutional because the test used to evaluate his mental abilities was not accurate.

For the second time, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Moore last year, saying that it would be unconstitutional to execute him because of his mental disability.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to uphold the higher court’s decision in 2019 and changed Moore’s sentence to life in prison. He was granted parole in June.

Moore’s appellate attorneys did not return the newspaper’s request for comment.

After the Supreme Court’s first review of Moore’s case in 2017, the state Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to come up with new standards to measure intellectual disabilities.

Just last week, 50-year-old Gilmar Guevara became the seventh Texan to have a death sentence commuted because of the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision.