Supreme Court suspends execution as death row inmate demands DNA test

July 17 (UPI) – The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution to a Texas death row inmate just minutes before he was scheduled to be executed Tuesday night. The inmate plans to undergo DNA testing to prove his claim that he actually committed the 1998 murder for which he was sentenced to death.

The death sentence against 42-year-old Ruben Gutierrez was to be carried out by lethal injection on Tuesday in Huntsville Prison. He stabbed 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison to death on September 5, 1998 and stole more than $56,000 from the owner of the trailer park.

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But just before he was due to receive his only dose of pentobarbital, the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution without significant dissent.

The order states that the stay will remain in effect indefinitely until the judges decide whether to grant his request for reconsideration of his appeal.

“If the motion for leave to appeal is denied, this stay shall automatically expire,” Justice Samuel Alito said in his order.

Gutierrez was 21 when Harrison was murdered for the tens of thousands of dollars she kept in a safe in her home. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed in the head 13 times with two different screwdrivers.

His lawyers argue that their client planned the robbery together with his two co-defendants Rene Garcia and Pedro Garza, but did not help them murder the woman.

For nearly 15 years, Gutierrez had petitioned state and federal courts for access to fingernail scrapings and a bloodstained shirt belonging to Harrison, as well as a loose hair found wrapped around one of her fingers, with results he said would prove his innocence.

His attempts to have DNA from the crime scene tested wound through the courts for years, and in late June his lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that Texas law regarding post-conviction DNA testing denied Gutierrez his constitutional right to potentially exculpatory evidence.

They argue that Texas state law has since changed its DNA testing protocol to require mandatory testing of all items containing biological material in capital crimes where the state seeks the death penalty.

“Had this crime been committed today, there would have already been DNA testing of these items,” they argued in the court document, “and Gutierrez would never have been sentenced to death.”

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court granted a second last-minute stay of Gutierrez’s scheduled execution.

In June 2020, an hour before Gutierrez’s execution, the judges granted his request for a stay. He had challenged the state’s rule prohibiting religious witnesses from accompanying death row inmates to the execution chamber.

Two people have already been executed in Texas this year, and four more are scheduled to be executed this year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice website.

According to a count by the Death Penalty Information Center, nine people were executed across the country by the end of June.