Supreme Court blocks Texas man's execution as he seeks DNA testing

The Supreme Court on Tuesday temporarily blocked Texas from executing a man convicted of stabbing a retired schoolteacher as he attempts to secure DNA testing that he claims would remove him from death row. 

Ruben Gutierrez, 47, was scheduled to be executed Tuesday evening after being sentenced to death over the 1998 murder of Escolastica Harrison. 

In a brief order without any noted dissents, the Supreme Court granted Gutierrez’s last-minute, emergency request to temporarily put his execution on hold. 

Gutierrez has separately filed a petition urging the high court to take up his appeal that, if successful, would revive his bid to have certain evidence in the case DNA tested.  

The justices have not yet acted on the petition. Their rare move to delay the execution, however, signals that they may be inclined to take up the case when they return from their summer recess. 

The newly issued pause lasts until the court resolves the appeal one way or another.

Prosecutors say Gutierrez and two others in 1998 beat and stabbed Harrison, an 85-year-old woman, at her Brownsville, Texas, home as they robbed her of nearly $600,000 in cash. Gutierrez has maintained he never entered the woman’s home or knew anyone would be harmed.  

Gutierrez has long sought DNA testing of evidence like a blood-stained shirt, the woman’s nail scrapings and a loose hair found wrapped around her finger. 

His years-long battle recently ended up before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which found Gutierrez didn’t meet federal requirements for legal standing, meaning the right to sue. 

Gutierrez’s lawyers called that decision “wrong and pernicious," saying it conflicts with the Supreme Court’s ruling last year over another Texas death row inmate’s attempt to seek DNA testing. 

“The Fifth Circuit has ignored this Court’s clear precedent and gone out of its way to create an impractical, burdensome standing test requiring federal courts to probe the parties’ dispute and litigation history with a fine toothcomb in order to foretell the future, contingent actions of state officials,” they wrote in their Supreme Court petition.

In their response, the Texas attorney general’s office told the justices that the man has “failed to identify any error” despite having “litigated and re-litigated" challenges for more than 20 years.

“Thus, his punishment is just, and his execution will be constitutional,” the state wrote.