Obie Weathers, III v. Lorie Davis, Director, 915 F.3d 1025

Obie Weathers III was convicted of a 2000 capital murder and sentenced to death; his conviction and sentence were affirmed on direct appeal.
He pursued state habeas relief, which rejected his Atkins (intellectual disability) claim in 2014; federal habeas review denied a COA in 2016 and relief in the district court.
After the Supreme Court decided Moore v. Texas (2017)—which prohibited Texas’s Briseño factors from restricting Atkins claims—Weathers obtained certiorari and the case was remanded to the Fifth Circuit to consider Moore’s impact.
The Fifth Circuit granted a COA, received supplemental briefing, and reexamined whether the state-court denial of Atkins relief was unreasonable in light of Moore.
The court concluded it could not apply Moore retroactively on habeas review because Shoop v. Hill holds Moore was not "clearly established" federal law at the time the state court decided Weathers’s claim.
The Fifth Circuit therefore affirmed the district court’s denial of habeas relief.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether Moore v. Texas requires granting habeas relief to Weathers	Moore shows Texas’s Briseño factors are unconstitutional and should change Atkins analysis for Weathers	Moore cannot be applied retroactively on federal habeas; state-court decision was not unreasonable under AEDPA	Denied — Moore not "clearly established" law for AEDPA retroactivity; habeas relief not warranted
Whether Hall v. Florida affects Weathers’s claim	Hall undermines state standards for IQ-based exclusions and supports relief	Hall did not establish clearly applicable law in Texas and is not retroactive under AEDPA	Rejected — Hall not clearly established federal law for this case
Whether the state court unreasonably credited the State expert over Weathers’s expert	Weathers argued state court improperly discounted his expert and anecdotal evidence of pre-18 deficits	State relied on its expert and the record showed mixed/insufficient evidence of adaptive deficits before 18	Denied — factual determinations not unreasonable under §2254(d)(2)
Whether absence of pre-18 IQ evidence dooms Atkins claim	Weathers argued lack of pre-18 IQ testing does not preclude Atkins finding given other evidence	State argued there was insufficient evidence of deficits before 18; record mixed	Affirmed — record did not show unreasonable determination; Shoop bars applying Moore to alter that conclusion

Moore v. Texas, 137 S. Ct. 1039 (2017) (Supreme Court held Briseño factors cannot be used to limit Atkins determinations)
Shoop v. Hill, 139 S. Ct. 504 (2019) (Supreme Court held Moore was not "clearly established" for AEDPA retroactivity on habeas review)
Hall v. Florida, 134 S. Ct. 1986 (2014) (Supreme Court rejected an inflexible IQ cutoff for Atkins determinations)
Williams v. Stephens, 761 F.3d 561 (5th Cir. 2014) (discusses AEDPA standard for federal habeas review)