U.S. Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Texas Death Row Prisoner Seeking DNA Testing

On June 26, 2025, the United States Supreme Court issued a rare 6 – 3 rul­ing in favor of a Texas death row pris­on­er, Ruben Gutierrez, hold­ing that he may pro­ceed with his law­suit chal­leng­ing Texas’s post-con­vic­tion DNA statute on con­sti­tu­tion­al grounds. Mr. Gutierrez was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 1999 for the mur­der and rob­bery of an 85-year-old woman but has long main­tained he did not know his code­fen­dants would kill the vic­tim. According to the deci­sion, ​“Gutierrez has stand­ing to bring his §1983 claim chal­leng­ing Texas’ post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing pro­ce­dures under the Due Process Clause.” The Court had pre­vi­ous­ly issued a stay of exe­cu­tion to Mr. Gutierrez on July 16, 2024, just 20 min­utes before he was sched­uled to be executed. 

Following the release of the Court’s deci­sion, Shawn Nolan, attor­ney for Mr. Gutierrez said that “[t]oday, Ruben Gutierrez is one step clos­er to prov­ing that he was wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death.” Mr. Nolan added, “[t]he Court’s deci­sion makes clear that Ruben has a legal right to chal­lenge the Texas post-con­vic­tion DNA statute which lim­its his access to DNA test­ing to show he should not have been sen­tenced to death. We trust the Cameron County dis­trict attor­ney will heed the Supreme Court’s deci­sion and pro­vide us, at long last, with access to the exten­sive foren­sic evi­dence in Ruben’s case.”

But Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz state­ment sug­gest­ed con­tin­ued recal­ci­trance regard­ing the Court’s deci­sion: ​“The Supreme Court’s rul­ing means the case is remand­ed to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for fur­ther pro­ceed­ings. We will con­tin­ue to lit­i­gate on behalf of the vic­tim and look for­ward to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, once again, deny­ing his relief. The day on which jus­tice will be served for Mrs. Harrison with Gutierrez’s exe­cu­tion will come.”

Mr. Gutierrez was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of Escolastica Harrison, an elder­ly man­ag­er of a trail­er park who kept over $600,000 in her home due to her mis­trust of banks. Mr. Gutierrez admit­ted to par­tic­i­pat­ing in plan­ning the rob­bery but said he stayed out­side the trail­er and did not know that Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia, his code­fen­dants, would kill her. Rene Garcia was sen­tenced to life in prison while Pedro Gracia remains at large.

Counsel for Mr. Gutierrez asked the Court to inter­vene ahead of his sched­uled exe­cu­tion because Texas had denied access to test­ing crime scene DNA under state law. They argued that var­i­ous items from the crime scene remain untest­ed and would rule Mr. Gutierrez out as the per­son respon­si­ble for the mur­der. For over a decade, Mr. Gutierrez sought DNA test­ing of crime scene evi­dence, includ­ing blood­stains, scrap­ings from the victim’s fin­ger­nails, and hair wrapped around her fin­ger. If DNA test­ing showed that Mr. Gutierrez was not present in the trail­er, he could still be con­vict­ed of mur­der under Texas’ law of par­ties, but it would sup­port his argu­ment that he did not actu­al­ly kill, intend to kill, or antic­i­pate a killing — which would bar the death penal­ty in his case. Courts reject­ed Mr. Gutierrez’s requests, cit­ing Texas’ strict post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing law. The statute per­mits test­ing only when an indi­vid­ual can demon­strate they would not have been con­vict­ed if DNA evi­dence had been avail­able and pre­sent­ed excul­pa­to­ry results. The law pro­hibits DNA test­ing in cas­es where the results would sole­ly impact the sen­tence rather than the underlying conviction.

Mr. Gutierrez made the same legal argu­ments as Rodney Reed, anoth­er Texas death row pris­on­er who filed a §1983 law­suit against state offi­cials. Mr. Reed sued Texas because it denied him DNA test­ing, claim­ing the state’s require­ments were impos­si­ble to meet due to pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­han­dling of evi­dence. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mr. Reed’s favor, say­ing he had stand­ing to chal­lenge Texas’ law. But Mr. Gutierrez got a dif­fer­ent result. The Fifth Circuit denied Mr. Gutierrez the pos­si­bil­i­ty to pur­sue his suit chal­leng­ing the poten­tial­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al statute because it deter­mined that even if that statute was deemed uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, pros­e­cu­tors might refuse to fol­low the court’s order. 

Writing for the major­i­ty, Justice Sonia Sotomayor acknowl­edged that Mr. Gutierrez’ case large­ly mir­rors that of Mr. Reed, which ​“plain­ly estab­lish­es” that a claim could be brought for DNA test­ing. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the Fifth Circuit court erred in its deci­sion by ​“trans­form­ing” the ques­tion of relief for Mr. Gutierrez into ​“a guess as to whether a favor­able court deci­sion will in fact ulti­mate­ly cause the pros­e­cu­tor to overturn evidence.”

In one of the Court’s dis­sents, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that with the majority’s rul­ing, the stan­dard set out in Mr. Reed’s case has been ​“fla­grant­ly” dis­tort­ed. He argued that under the ​“real” test, a pris­on­er fil­ing suit must ​“show that a favor­able deci­sion” would be ​“sub­stan­tial­ly like­ly” to make a pros­e­cu­tor allow DNA test­ing. Justice Alito also wrote that even if DNA tests did not find Mr. Gutierrez’s DNA, or even if they found an alter­na­tive suspect’s DNA, that would not prove his innocence.