16 December 2020 :
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ruled that Clifton Williams is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability and has converted his death sentence to life imprisonment. Although the court initially upheld Williams’ death sentence, it later returned the case to the trial court for reconsideration after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Moore v. Texas that the Texas courts had been applying an unconstitutional standard for determining intellectual disability. On remand, the Smith County trial court reviewed Williams’ evidence under the accepted clinical criteria for diagnosing intellectual disability and determined that Williams was intellectually disabled. The appeals court accepted the trial court’s findings and removed Williams from death row. Williams’ offense was committed in July 2005, just before the September 1, 2005 effective date of Texas’ life without parole statute. As a result, he will be eligible to apply for parole after serving 40 years in prison.
