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.
Gutierrez 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. His application for a stay of execution and petition for a writ of certiorari based on the denial of DNA testing are pending with the U.S. Supreme Court.
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.
If the execution proceeds, Gutierrez would be the third person put to death in Texas this year and the seventh involving a case from Cameron County.