A Texas death row inmate received a last-minute reprieve last Tuesday after the US Supreme Court granted a stay of execution just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Ruben Gutierrez has long insisted that DNA testing would prove that he was not responsible for the murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in her Brownsville home in 1998.
Prosecutors accused Gutierrez of murdering the retired school teacher when he attempted to rob her of the more than $600,000 she kept hidden in her home due to her distrust of banks.
Gutierrez’s attorneys have argued that prosecutors had no physical or forensic evidence that directly connected him to the murder for which two others were also charged.
In its order, the Supreme Court said the stay would remain in place to give the justices time to decide whether to review Guutierrez’s appeal. If the high court declines to take up the appeal, the stay of execution will be lifted.
Gutierrez’s execution has been delayed several times in recent years, including in June 2020 when the Supreme Court issued a stay about an hour before his execution.
In their most recent appeal to the Supreme Court, Gutierrez’s lawyers argued that the state of Texas was denying him the right to post-conviction DNA testing allowed under state law.
According to the filing, items recovered from the crime scene, including biological evidence from under Harrison’s nails and blood samples from within her home, had not been DNA tested.
Shawn Nolan, one of Gutierrez’s attorneys, expressed relief over the Supreme Court’s reprieve, saying that he was hopeful that the Supreme Court would clear the way for DNA testing to prove that Gutierrez should not be executed.
Guiterrez admitted to planning the robbery and confirmed that he was inside Harrison’s home at the time of her murder but insisted that he did not kill her. However, he was convicted of her killing under a state law that makes an individual liable for the criminal actions of others if they encourage or assist in the crime.
