The U.S. Supreme Court announced on July 25 that it will consider on Sept. 30 whether to hear the death row appeal of Ruben Gutierrez, who was convicted in the 1998 murder of a mobile home park manager in Texas.
Mr. Gutierrez denies guilt and argues that DNA testing of the physical evidence would clear him. He says a federal appeals court erred when it added additional conditions to the Supreme Court’s existing precedent governing post-conviction DNA testing.
The court stated that it will consider the petition for certiorari, or review, in the case of Gutierrez v. Saenz at its next scheduled private judicial conference at the end of its current summer recess.
Respondent Luis Saenz is the district attorney for Cameron County, Texas.
On June 16, the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Mr. Gutierrez at least until it could deal with his petition.
The order to halt the execution by lethal injection was issued 20 minutes before it was scheduled to be carried out.
If the petition is denied, the stay will end, clearing the way for his execution. If it is granted, the court is expected to schedule oral arguments in the case.
The brief said the evidence presented at trial demonstrated that the deceased 85-year-old victim kept about $600,000 in cash at her home, which was also her office for the mobile home park she owned and operated.
Mr. Gutierrez became friends with the victim and knew about the cash. On Sept. 5, 1998, he went with an accomplice to her home. The two individuals left the residence with the money. The victim had been beaten and stabbed to death, the brief said.
Prosecutors said Mr. Gutierrez told the police the original plan was to get the victim outside her home and go inside and take the money without being seen. But the plan fell apart, and the accomplice attacked the victim with a screwdriver while Mr. Gutierrez retrieved the money.
According to the brief, the medical examiner gave evidence that the victim experienced defensive wounds, which meant she was fighting for her life. She received about 13 stab wounds caused by two different objects—“almost certainly” a flat-head screwdriver and maybe a Phillips head screwdriver. She died from “massive blows to the left side of the face,” the medical examiner said.
“This Court has never found that a prisoner lacks Article III standing to bring a constitutional challenge against state DNA statutes that limit access to potentially exculpatory evidence,” the petition said.
Article III of the Constitution governs federal courts and has been held to mean that they may only hear cases involving actual controversies in which at least one litigant has standing to sue. Standing is the legal capacity of a litigant to sue. The person must show a significant connection to the law or action complained of.
Texas law allows a convicted person to seek post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if specific conditions are met. A defendant must show that the testing could generate new evidence capable of raising a reasonable probability that the defendant would not otherwise have been convicted.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Reed v. Goertz (2023) laid out standing requirements for this kind of case.
Mr. Gutierrez was refused post-conviction DNA testing and sued in federal court, arguing that the Texas statute denied him due process or fair treatment in the judicial system, the petition said.
But a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit attached “an additional layer of standing analysis” onto the Reed precedent and rejected the appeal.
The circuit court “speculated that, in this case, state officials would not permit DNA testing even in the face of a federal court judgment because, in earlier proceedings, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals … commented that favorable DNA test results would not prove Gutierrez innocent,” according to the petition.
The Fifth Circuit’s “decision to fashion a new, burdensome test has created a circuit split with the Eighth and Ninth Circuits,” and the Supreme Court needs to intervene “to resolve the circuit split and to ensure fidelity to its precedent,” the petition said.
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Mr. Gutierrez’s attorney, Shawn Nolan of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Jefferson David Clendenin, an attorney in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, but had not received any replies as of the time of publication.
