In a 6-3 decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ruben Gutierrez, sentenced to death for the murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in 1998 during a robbery, has the right to have evidence from his case tested, the Texas Tribune reported. Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch dissented.
Gutierrez has been trying for almost 15 years to get the evidence in his case tested, claiming it would prove he wasn’t even in the victim’s house the night of the murder. His motions were denied twice in trial court, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the denials. The courts denied his motions because they reasoned that even if his DNA was not found on the murder weapons, he would still be culpable under the state’s Law of Parties, which holds that a person can be criminally responsible for a crime even if they didn’t commit it but participated with others who did.
Sotomayor’s opinion is based mainly on a previous Supreme Court ruling, also out of Texas, in which Rodney Reed sought DNA testing in his death penalty case. In both cases, the Court ruled the plaintiffs had the right to testing procedures under the Due Process Clause.
“The Court held that Reed had standing to pursue declaratory relief. First, Reed adequately alleged an injury: denial of access to the requested evidence. Second, the state prosecutor caused Reed’s injury by denying access to the evidence. Finally, if a federal court concluded that Texas’s postconviction DNA testing procedures violate due process, the state prosecutor’s justification for denying DNA testing would be eliminated, thereby removing the barrier between Reed and the requested testing. The same is true here. Like Reed, Gutierrez alleges that the local prosecutor’s denial of his DNA testing request deprived him of his liberty interests in utilizing state procedures to obtain an acquittal or sentence reduction. As in Reed, the declaratory judgment
Gutierrez seeks would redress that injury by changing the legal status of the parties and eliminating the state prosecutor’s allegedly unlawful justification for denying DNA testing,” the ruling noted.
This is the second time the Supreme Court has blocked Gutierrez’s execution shortly before he was scheduled to be killed, Scotusblog reported
Last July, the Court put Gutierrez’s execution on hold 20 minutes before the state planned to kill him, according to Scotusblog.