Texas | Commentary: Death row inmate right; test DNA

Ruben Gutierrez, who is facing execution, has asked for DNA testing of crime scene evidence for more than 10 years.

The reasonable position is to test the DNA. The prosecutor’s position — blocking testing — is the unreasonable one. There should be nothing controversial about wanting to learn the truth.

As a former elected Bexar County district attorney, I find the prosecution’s refusal to ensure accuracy in this case mystifying. The prosecutor has a moral, ethical and legal duty to see that justice is done. The prosecutor should be the one requesting DNA testing, not refusing it at every turn.

At trial, the prosecution argued Gutierrez, either alone or with others, stabbed Escolastica Harrison. Gutierrez maintains he did not kill Harrison and that he had no knowledge that others were going to assault or kill her.

The Brownsville police collected several pieces of evidence with biological material that are likely to contain the DNA of the person or people who killed Harrison. These items have never been tested for DNA. If the crime happened today, the DNA evidence would be tested as a matter of course.

Gutierrez was convicted under the law of the parties, which allows the jury to find a person guilty of capital murder based on the conduct of co-defendants. Gutierrez contends if the DNA evidence had been presented to the jury and it showed he was not the actual killer, the jurors would not have sentenced him to death.

Support for DNA testing does not make me or anyone else a bleeding-heart liberal. I was the district attorney for Bexar County in the 1980s and a former member of the board of directors of the National District Attorneys Association. My prosecutors took thousands of criminals off the streets.

We prosecuted capital murder cases and compiled a perfect record. In every case we prosecuted, the defendant was convicted. The state of Texas executed each of those defendants. In 2005, the Houston Chronicle argued persuasively that one of my prosecutions, of a young man named Ruben Cantu, may have resulted in the execution of an innocent person.

Although I thought Cantu’s trial was perfect, in 2004, my star witness, the lone eyewitness, recanted his testimony. That recantation shook me to my core when I realized that a person I had prosecuted and who was subsequently executed may have been innocent.

Texas has executed other people, including Cameron Willingham, Carlos DeLuna and Claude Jones, who almost certainly were innocent. I believe, more than ever, that prosecutors and courts must do everything in their power to make sure Texas never executes another innocent person [by repealing the death penalty? - DPN]. In Gutierrez’s case, the decision to test the DNA should be an easy call. Any time DNA evidence exists, it should be tested.

The case against Gutierrez was never airtight. Gutierrez maintained his innocence and finally confessed, in his third statement, only after the police threatened to arrest his wife and take away his children. Police-induced false confessions are one of the leading causes of wrongful convictions. In almost one-third of DNA exonerations, the person had falsely confessed, according to the Innocence Project.

No physical or forensic evidence connected Gutierrez to the crime scene. The single eyewitness was not able to make an in-court identification of Gutierrez, even though he was sitting at the defense table next to his defense counsel. Instead, the eyewitness picked someone from the gallery and a juror when asked to identify who he saw on the day of the crime. More than 70 percent of DNA exonerations involve mistaken eyewitness identifications.

I don’t know if Gutierrez is telling the truth. But there is a simple way to find out. Test the DNA.

Source: expressnews.com, Sam Millsap, November 28, 2021. Sam Millsap served as Bexar County district attorney from 1982 to 1987 and practices law in San Antonio.

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Florida executes Richard Knight

Man convicted of killing a woman and her 4-year-old daughter is executed in Florida A Florida man convicted of fatally stabbing his cousin’s girlfriend and the couple’s 4-year-old daughter was put to death Thursday evening, becoming the 7th person executed by the state this year. Richard Knight, 47, was pronounced dead at 6:13 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke. Knight was convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder in the June 2002 killings of Odessia Stephens and her daughter, Hanessia Mullings. The curtain of the death chamber went up promptly at the scheduled 6:00 p.m. execution time. Knight was already strapped down with his arms extended and an IV line in place.

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Tennessee fails to execute Tony Carruthers after IV difficulties. State won't try again for a year

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Tennessee officials on Thursday called off the lethal injection of Tony Carruthers, who was convicted of kidnapping and murdering three people in 1994, after his executioners tried and failed for over an hour to establish an intravenous line. Gov. Bill Lee announced soon afterward that the state would not try again for at least a year. In a written statement, the Tennessee Department of Corrections said medical personnel had quickly established a primary IV line but were unable to find a suitable vein for a backup line as required by the state’s execution protocol. Efforts to insert a central line also failed, and officials called off the execution.

Arizona executes Leroy McGill

Arizona executes inmate who set couple on fire in 'horrific attack' Arizona has executed Leroy McGill for setting 21-year-old Charles Perez and his 24-year-old girlfriend on fire. Perez died the next day and Perez survived with severe burn injuries. Arizona has executed a death row inmate for setting 2 people on fire more than 20 years ago, killing 1 of them and changing the other's life forever. The state executed Leroy McGill, 63, by lethal injection on Wednesday, May 20, for the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Charles Perez. McGill set Perez and his girlfriend on fire after they accused him of theft, court records say. Perez died of his injuries the next day while his girlfriend survived with severe burns.

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Florida | Jury recommends death for Otto Lenke, judge to make final call

FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A St. Lucie County jury recommended the death penalty for Otto Lenke on Thursday in the penalty phase of his first-degree murder trial, though the final decision rests with the judge. Lenke, 66, a former Melbourne police officer and Indian River County firefighter , was convicted earlier this month of first-degree murder and first-degree arson in the Feb. 17, 2021, killing of Richard Benson at Fast Frank’s Custom Cycle Components, Benson’s motorcycle repair shop in Fort Pierce . Prosecutors said Lenke shot Benson multiple times inside the shop, then poured a flammable liquid on him and set him on fire while he was still alive. Surveillance video from the shop captured the attack.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog