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.”

Put sim­ply, Reed held that a fed­er­al court order declar­ing ​‘that Texas’s post-con­vic­tion DNA test­ing pro­ce­dures vio­late due process’ would redress the prisoner’s claimed injury by ​‘eliminat[ing]’ that state prosecutor’s reliance on Article 64 as a rea­son for deny­ing DNA testing…The same is true here and the Court therefore reverses.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s rul­ing in Gutierrez v. Saenz (2025)

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.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Hayley Bedard, June 27, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde