AUSTIN — Fueled by a U.S. Supreme Court decision chastising Texas for how it determines intellectual disability in death penalty cases, criminal justice advocates say the time has come for the state's legislators to pass a bill that aligns with federal law.

Texas, which leads the nation in death row executions, is one of nine states with the death penalty that hasn’t passed a law outlining rules to protect people with intellectual disabilities from being executed.

Without a law, the state’s courts had to come up with their own system. But last year, the Supreme Court declared the method violated the Constitution because it relies on nonclinical and unscientific standards to determine who was intellectually disabled.

“It’s embarrassing that Texas has had to have the U.S. Supreme Court send back cases to us telling us we’re not using medically informed criteria when applying the death penalty to a very vulnerable population,” said state Rep. Joe Moody, an El Paso Democrat. “We have to tackle that. The Supreme Court has told us we have to make this change.”

Moody, chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence committee, said he expects lawmakers to take up the issue this year, though legislation has not yet been filed. Last year, House Speaker Joe Straus directed the committee to study the issue and report back to the House.

Moody said the committee has drafted a report, and he expects it to recommend how to apply the death penalty to both people with intellectual disabilities and severe mental disorders.

In 2001, the Legislature passed a law banning the execution of intellectually disabled people, but Gov. Rick Perry vetoed it a year before the Supreme Court’s Atkins vs. Virginia ruling, which declared the practice unconstitutional. Perry said at the time that the law was unnecessary because judicial safeguards were in place.

The case of Bobby Moore

Medical experts say Bobby Moore, who has been on death row for 36 years, is intellectually disabled. On one test, he recorded an IQ score of 59. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

Texas is at the center of this issue as attorneys for death row inmate Bobby Moore are seeking review from the U.S. Supreme Court for a second time. In 1980, Moore shot James McCarble, a 73-year-old grocery clerk during a botched robbery in Houston. After he was sentenced to death, his attorneys’ appeals hinged on Moore being severely intellectually disabled.

Last year, the Supreme Court sent Moore’s case back to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, with a sharp rebuke that said the state’s practice was medically outdated and relied on misinformed stereotypes to characterize people with intellectual disabilities. In June, despite pleas from the prosecution to change Moore’s sentence to life in prison, the Texas appeals court upheld the death sentence for Moore.

Moore’s attorney has since petitioned the Supreme Court to vacate the Texas court’s ruling.

“This gives added impetus for the Legislature to do something,” said Jordan Steiker, a University of Texas law professor and co-director of the school’s Capital Punishment Center. “They should pass a statute that over protects, rather than under protects and makes it hard to make a mistake.”

He said without a state statute that appropriately protects people with intellectual disabilities, Texas will continue to find itself entangled in expensive and embarrassing litigation.

Texas judges also say they want the Legislature to pass a law, taking the burden off the courts.

“The No. 1 area that needs attention and that has needed attention for over a decade is intellectual disabilities,” Judge Elsa Alcala, who sits on the Court of Criminal Appeals, said during a hearing of Moody’s committee in March. “My court has had various judges repeatedly tell the Legislature, ‘Please write a law we can apply.’ ”

Alcala and two other judges forcefully dissented in a 67-page rebuke when the court ruled 5-3 to uphold Moore’s death penalty sentence.

“Most judges will tell you that we are not law writers. That’s what you do,” she told the House committee members.

The legislative session begins Jan. 8.