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NEW at SCOTUS: as he did in the Louisiana abortion case earlier this month, Chief Justice Roberts today sided with Court's liberals in a reprise of Moore v. Texas, a death penalty case. This is pretty big news. 1/ supremecourt.gov/orders/courtor…
In 2017, Justice Ginsburg wrote a 5-3 ruling cancelling the execution of Bobby James Moore, a man with intellectual disability Ginsburg wrote that the lower court had misapplied SCOTUS precedent in evaluating his intellectual functioning. Roberts dissented, w Alito & Thomas. 2/
Here's my report on the 2017 ruling. 3/ economist.com/democracy-in-a…
RBG's 2017 decision sent the case back to Texas Court of Criminal Appeals with instructions to reconsider Moore's intellectual functioning. The lower court gave it another go, and again found Moore to be intellectually competent. 4/
Today, SCOTUS said the Texas court's second-round analysis was again faulty and reversed Moore's death sentence for a second time. Here's the nub of the analysis 5/ 
Justice Alito wrote a dissent today, joined by Thomas and Gorsuch. (Gorsuch was not on the court when Moore was first argued in 2016 and did not participate in the decision.) 6/
But this time Roberts switched sides and wrote this short concurrence, noting that the Texas court had "repeated the same errors that this Court previously condemned". 7/
These moves by CJ Roberts are not indications he is becoming more liberal. They are signs he will tend to stand by SCOTUS precedent whenever it is ignored by lower courts, whether or not he joined the majority when the precedent was established. 8/
