UPDATE: On October 4, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and agreed to consider Ruben Gutierrez’s claim that he should be allowed to pursue his legal rights to conduct DNA testing.
In response to this latest development, Shawn Nolan, an attorney for Ruben Gutierrez, said, “We are relieved the Supreme Court has agreed to address the Fifth Circuit’s refusal to follow Reed v. Goertz, which is indistinguishable from Ruben Gutierrez’s case. Granting certiorari and extending the stay of execution brings us one step closer to finally doing the DNA testing that will overturn Ruben’s wrongful conviction and death sentence.”
Update as of 6:00 PM on July 16, 2024:
Just minutes before 6:00 PM CT on July 16, 2024, the U.S. Supreme granted a stay of execution to Ruben Gutierrez, who was scheduled to be put to death that evening. It was the second time in four years he has received an 11th hour reprieve from the Court.
On October 4, 2024, the Supreme Court agreed to consider Gutierrez’s appeal challenging the constitutionality of a Texas law limiting DNA testing after conviction.
Statement from Shawn Nolan, Attorney for Ruben Gutierrez:
“The United States Supreme Court has stayed tonight’s scheduled execution of Ruben Gutierrez. Mr. Gutierrez has been requesting DNA testing for more than a decade to prove he did not kill the victim in this case. We are hopeful that now the Court has stepped in to stop this execution, we can ultimately accomplish the DNA testing to prove that Mr. Gutierrez should not be executed now or in the future.”
— Shawn Nolan, Attorney for Ruben Gutierrez, July 16, 2024
The U.S. Supreme Court Order Staying Execution Can Be Accessed Here: https://tinyurl.com/2xdmzthf
Petition for Writ of Certiorari
Reply in Support of Petition for Writ of Certiorari and Motion for Stay of Execution
Read coverage of the stay from the Associated Press.
Original post from July 16, 2024:
The State of Texas is scheduled to execute Ruben Gutierrez tonight, July 16, 2024. It is the sixth execution date he has faced since 2018. According to the Texas Observer, “Since 2018, Gutierrez has spent more than 500 days on ‘death watch’—the high-surveillance housing area for people with scheduled executions.” He came within an hour of being put to death on June 16, 2020, before the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay based on his request for a spiritual advisor to be present in the chamber with him; those issues have since been resolved.
Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1998 robbery and murder of Escolastica Harrison, a mobile home park manager and retired teacher, in Brownsville (Cameron County). In the 25 years he has spent on death row, he has consistently maintained he did not kill Ms. Harrison and has sought DNA testing of crime scene evidence, including fingernail scrapings from the victim and hair found on her body, to support his innocence. His attorney, Shawn Nolan, has noted that such testing of biological evidence is now routine (in fact, required by law) in new capital cases in which the state plans to seek the death penalty, but post-conviction pursuits of DNA testing are treated differently. State and federal courts have repeatedly denied Gutierrez’s requests.
In appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, Gutierrez argued Texas has denied his right under state law to post-conviction DNA testing that would show he would not have been eligible for the death penalty.
Gutierrez had asked the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Abbott to commute his sentence or, in the alternative, grant a temporary reprieve, but on Friday, the Board declined to recommend clemency.
According to coverage in the Texas Tribune, Gutierrez and two other suspects — Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia — were accused of planning to rob Harrison, but each blamed the other two for the murder. Garcia, who pleaded guilty, is serving a life sentence. Gracia was released from jail on a $75,000 bond and disappeared.
Gutierrez maintains that he did not kill Harrison, that he was not inside her home when she was killed and that he did not know of nor consent to any intention to kill her. Prosecutors pursued his conviction under Texas’s Law of Parties, which holds a person criminally responsible for the actions of another if they enter into a conspiracy to commit a felony that results in a death even if they do not participate in either the felony or the murder.
Additional coverage of the case is available from the Associated Press.
The State of Texas has executed two people in 2024, and four more executions are scheduled through October.