For nearly 15 years, a Texas death row prisoner has sought DNA testing that he claims will help to show he did not fatally stab an 85-year-old woman during a 1998 robbery.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for him to continue his legal challenge seeking DNA testing of crime scene evidence.
By a vote of 6 to 3, the court reversed a federal appeals court that had found Ruben Gutierrez was barred from bringing a lawsuit seeking the testing because he had failed to show that a state prosecutor would allow access to the evidence.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion for the court, joined by the two other liberal justices, along with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined in the court’s judgment and partially in the majority opinion, but filed a separate concurrence.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, joined by Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, who also filed his own dissent.
Last July, the justices made the extraordinary decision to spare Mr. Gutierrez’s life, halting his execution just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to be killed.
Mr. Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999 for the robbery and murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Texas. Prosecutors at trial accused him and two other men of plotting to rob Ms. Harrison of cash that she kept inside her mobile home.
Prosecutors said that Ms. Harrison was stabbed to death with two different screwdrivers, and they accused Mr. Gutierrez of wielding one of the weapons. A jury convicted Mr. Gutierrez of capital murder, and he was sentenced to death.
Under Texas law, a defendant can be guilty of capital murder even if he or she did not actually kill the victim, but played a major role in the underlying crime that resulted in their death. However, a person cannot be sentenced to death unless they “actually caused the death,” “intended to kill” or “anticipated” that the victim would be killed.
Mr. Gutierrez has long argued that he did none of those things and that his life should be spared. He claims he was not inside Ms. Harrison’s home on the night of the killing and that police coerced him into confessing that he was there.
Although he has never disputed that he and two others planned to rob her, he claims that he thought they would steal money while Ms. Harrison was out and that no one would be harmed.
In 2010, he began his quest for DNA testing of various crime scene evidence, including scrapings from Ms. Harrison’s fingernails, a loose hair and blood samples that might help bolster his claim that his accomplices had been inside the home, not him.
Mr. Gutierrez sought DNA testing under Texas law, asking for a state court order to require the local prosecutor to turn over untested crime scene evidence for evaluation. The trial court denied his request, reasoning that even if his DNA was not found on the tested items, that would not prove his innocence. Even if he did not go into the home, the court reasoned, Mr. Gutierrez was still a party to the robbery that led to the murder.
Almost a decade later, in 2019, bolstered by new evidence that he claimed would implicate another man in the murder, he tried once more. The state courts again rejected his claim.
Mr. Gutierrez then brought his claims to federal court, suing the local district attorney, Luis Saenz, whose office had custody of the crime scene evidence. Mr. Gutierrez claimed that by refusing to allow the evidence to be tested, the prosecutor had violated his due process rights.
A federal trial judge sided with Mr. Gutierrez, finding, in part, that it was fundamentally unfair for Texas to block prisoners from obtaining DNA tests of crime scene evidence unless they could show innocence of the underlying crime. Only in rare cases could a prisoner prove a wrongful death sentence without first getting access to the DNA evidence, the court found.
A divided panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit disagreed, finding that the local prosecutor was unlikely to “reverse course” and allow the DNA testing. The appeals court ruling came despite a 2023 decision by the Supreme Court that cleared the way for another Texas death row prisoner, Rodney Reed, to obtain DNA testing.
Justice Sotomayor wrote that Mr. Reed’s case was analogous to Mr. Gutierrez’s situation and “plainly establishes” that he could bring his claim for DNA testing. She wrote that the appeals court had erred by “transforming” the question of whether it could grant relief to Mr. Gutierrez into “a guess as to whether a favorable court decision will in fact ultimately cause the prosecutor to turn over the evidence.”
In his dissent, Justice Alito wrote that the majority had “flagrantly” distorted the standard set out in Mr. Reed’s case. Under the “real” test, Justice Alito wrote, a plaintiff must “show that a favorable decision” on constitutional claims would be “substantially likely” to lead a prosecutor to allow DNA testing.
Even if a DNA test did not detect Mr. Gutierrez’s presence inside the mobile home, and even if it showed the DNA of someone else, that would not clear him of murder, Justice Alito wrote, adding the decision’s “only practical effect will be to aid and abet Gutierrez’s efforts to run out the clock” on his execution.
Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Mr. Gutierrez, said in a statement that the court’s decision brought his client “one step closer to proving that he was wrongfully sentenced to death.”
The case will now be sent back to the Fifth Circuit for further proceedings.
Adam Liptak contributed reporting.
Abbie VanSickle covers the United States Supreme Court for The Times. She is a lawyer and has an extensive background in investigative reporting.
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