HUNTSVILLE, Texas — On Tuesday, 20 minutes before a Texas man was supposed to be put to death by lethal injection, the U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on his execution. The prisoner has long said that DNA testing would help show that he wasn’t the one who killed an 85-year-old woman by stabbing her during a home invasion in 1998.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted the indefinite stay just minutes before Ruben Gutierrez was supposed to be taken to the Huntsville, Texas, death chamber for the planned chemical injection.
It was found that the 47-year-old prisoner killed 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison with a knife at her Brownsville home in 1998. He has been looking for DNA tests for a long time because he thinks they will help him show that he had nothing to do with her death.
He has said for a long time that he didn’t kill Harrison, and his lawyers have said that no physical or forensic proof links him to the crime. Two more people were charged in the case as well.
In a short order, the high court said that the judge would not carry out the sentence until the justices decided whether to look over his appeal request. The execution stay would end automatically if the court says no to the request.
Gutierrez’s lawyers had earlier asked the Supreme Court to stop the execution, saying that Texas had violated his state law right to DNA tests after his conviction, which would have shown that he should not have been put to death.
His lawyers say that some of the things that were found at the crime scene, like Harrison’s nail scrapings, a hair that was wrapped around one of her fingers, and blood samples from her home, have never been tested.
“Gutierrez faces not only being denied DNA testing, which is something he has been asking for more than a decade but also being put to death for a crime he did not commit.” In their letter to the Supreme Court, Gutierrez’s lawyers said, “No one has any interest in a wrongful execution.”
Prosecutors say that the request for DNA testing is just a way to delay the case. They say that Gutierrez was found guilty based on several pieces of evidence, such as a statement in which he said he planned the theft and was in the victim’s home when she was killed. Gutierrez was found guilty based on Texas’ law of parties, which says that someone can be responsible for another person’s acts if they help or encourage them to do something illegal.
Both the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office replied to Gutierrez’s Supreme Court petition that state law does not allow “postconviction DNA testing to show the innocence of the death penalty and, even if it did, Gutierrez would not be entitled to it.”
“He has failed over and over to show that he deserves to have a DNA test after being convicted.” So, his punishment is fair, and his execution will follow the law, the officials said.
Gutierrez’s lawyers have also said that his case is similar to that of Rodney Reed, a Texas man on death row whose case was sent back to a lower court after the Supreme Court said in 2023 that he should be able to ask for DNA tests. Reed is still looking for a DNA test.
Lower courts have turned down Gutierrez’s pleas for DNA tests in the past.
This past week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles decided not to commute Gutierrez’s death sentence to a lesser term. Members also didn’t agree with giving a 90-day pardon.
In the past few years, Gutierrez’s execution dates have been pushed back several times, sometimes because of problems with having a spiritual advisor in the death chamber. Gutierrez was about an hour away from being put to death in June 2020 when the Supreme Court stopped the execution.
The police say Gutierrez made friends with Harrison so he could rob her. Prosecutors said Harrison put her money in her bedroom closet under a fake floor.
Three people are being charged in this case: Gutierrez, Garcia, and Gracia. Rene Garcia is in a Texas prison serving a life term. Pedro Gracia, who police say was the getaway driver, is still on the run.
