Supreme Court grants stay of execution of Texan who demands DNA test for 1998 knife murder

The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a stay of execution to a Texan man 20 minutes before he was scheduled to receive a lethal injection. The inmate has long claimed that a DNA test would help prove he was not responsible for the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman during a home invasion in 1998.

The nation’s highest court issued the indefinite stay shortly before inmate Ruben Gutierrez was scheduled to be transported to the execution chamber in Huntsville, Texas, where he was scheduled to receive the chemical injection.

The 47-year-old inmate was convicted of stabbing 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in her Brownsville home in 1998. Gutierrez has long tried to take a DNA test that would supposedly help him prove he had nothing to do with her death.

He has long maintained he did not kill Harrison, and his lawyers have said there is no physical or forensic evidence linking him to the murder. Two other people have also been charged in the case.

The Supreme Court’s brief order says the stay will remain in effect until the judges decide whether to consider his appeal. If the court denies the appeal, the stay will automatically be lifted.

Gutierrez’s lawyers had previously asked the Supreme Court to stop the execution, arguing that Texas law denied him the right to a post-conviction DNA test that would have shown that he was not eligible for the death penalty.

His lawyers argue that several items seized at the crime scene – including Harrison’s fingernails, a loose hair found wrapped around one of her fingers, and various blood samples from her apartment – were never tested.

“Gutierrez faces not only the denial (of a DNA test) that he has repeatedly and consistently requested for over a decade, but also the threat of execution for a crime he did not commit. No one has an interest in a wrongful execution,” Gutierrez’s lawyers wrote in their petition to the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors have said the demand for a DNA test was a delaying tactic and that Gutierrez was convicted based on several pieces of evidence, including a confession in which he admitted to planning the robbery and that he was in her home when she was killed. Gutierrez was convicted under Texas’s law of attrition, which states that a person can be held liable for the actions of others if they aid or encourage the commission of a crime.

In their response to Gutierrez’s petition to the Supreme Court, the Texas Attorney General’s Office and the Cameron County District Attorney’s Office said that state law “does not provide for post-conviction DNA testing to prove death penalty innocence, and even if such a test existed, Gutierrez would not be entitled to it.”

“He has repeatedly failed to demonstrate that he is entitled to post-conviction DNA testing. Therefore, his sentence is just and his execution is constitutional,” prosecutors said.

Gutierrez’s lawyers also argued that his case was similar to another death row inmate in Texas – Rodney Reed— whose case was remanded to a lower court after the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that he should be allowed to request a DNA test. Reed is still demanding a DNA test.

Lower courts had previously rejected Gutierrez’s requests for a DNA test.

Last week, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole voted against commuting Gutierrez’s death sentence to a lesser sentence. Members also declined to grant a 90-day reprieve.

In recent years, several execution dates for Gutierrez have been postponed, in part because of the presence of a chaplain in the execution chamber. In June 2020, Gutierrez was about an hour away from being executed when he received a stay from the Supreme Court.

Authorities said Gutierrez befriended Harrison so he could rob her. Prosecutors said Harrison hid her money under a false floor in her bedroom closet.

Police have charged three people in the case: Rene Garcia, Pedro Gracia and Gutierrez. Rene Garcia is serving a life sentence in a Texas prison, while Pedro Gracia, who police say was the getaway driver, is still at large.