Dexter Payne, Director, Arkansas Division of Correction v. Alvin Bernal Jackson

A defendant seeking to prove an intellectual disability that makes him ineligible for the death penalty must prove that he has significant adaptive deficits in at least one of three broad adaptive-skill domains. Applying that requirement, Moore v. Texas held that courts may not offset deficits in one domain with strengths in another. 137 S. Ct. 1039, 1050 n.8 (2017). But it expressly left open whether courts may “consider adaptive strengths alongside adaptive weaknesses in the same adaptive-skill domain.” Id. Since Moore, a large majority of courts have held they may consider a defendant’s strengths in a domain to resolve whether he has deficits there overall. Yet a small minority, including a divided panel of the court of appeals below, hold strengths are irrelevant. The only evidence courts may consider in deciding whether a defendant has adaptive deficits, they maintain, are weaknesses that suggest he does. The question presented is: Whether courts may consider adaptive strengths in deciding whether a defendant is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.