United States Supreme Court Issues Rare Last-Minute Stay for Ruben Gutierrez

The state of Texas was scheduled to execute Ruben Gutierrez (pictured) on July 16, 2024; however, the United States Supreme Court issued a rare, last-minute stay of execution just 20 minutes before he was scheduled to be executed by lethal injection. This is the first stay of execution granted by the Supreme Court since it issued a stay for Richard Glossip in 2023. In a petition filed with the Supreme Court, attorneys for Mr. Gutierrez asked the Court to intervene because Texas has denied access to testing the crime scene DNA under state law. His attorneys argued that various items from the crime scene remain untested and would rule Mr. Gutierrez out as the person responsible for the murder. The petition submitted to the court said that “[Mr.] Gutierrez faces not only the denial of (DNA testing) that he has repeatedly and consistently sought for over a decade, but moreover, execution for a crime he did not commit. Not one has any interest in a wrongful execution.” The Texas Attorney General’s Office and Cameron County District Attorney’s Office maintained that state law does not allow “for postconviction DNA testing to show innocence of the death penalty and, even if it did, [Mr.] Gutierrez would not be entitled to it.”

In response to the court’s issuance of a stay of execution, Shawn Nolan, an attorney for Mr. Gutierrez said that “we are hopeful that now the Court has stepped in to stop this execution, we can ultimately accomplish the DNA testing to prove that Mr. Gutierrez should not be executed now or in the future.” With the Supreme Court’s stay of execution, the court will now decide whether to review Mr. Gutierrez’s appeal request.

Mr. Gutierrez was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999 for conspiring with two other men to rob a trailer park operator in Brownsville, Texas, which ended in her death. Mr. Gutierrez has long maintained that he did not enter the victim’s home and did not know the other men intended on killing Ms. Harrison. Mr. Gutierrez has spent more than a decade fighting to test crime scene DNA to prove that did not kill Ms. Harrison.