Justices side with Texas death row inmate seeking DNA test to avoid execution https://t.co/83DEZVLTnz
Reluctant prosecutor can't "manufacture mootness" or ruin standing for inmate seeking DNA test, SCOTUS says. https://t.co/veaoHqsftE #SCOTUS
Justices side with Texas death row inmate seeking DNA testing to show he shouldn't be executed @WashTimes https://t.co/KTdd0yUviG
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6–3 on Thursday that Texas death-row prisoner Ruben Gutierrez can pursue a federal civil-rights lawsuit challenging the state’s limits on post-conviction DNA testing. The decision reverses the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held that Gutierrez lacked standing to sue Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz for access to untested forensic evidence. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing for the majority, said Gutierrez’s claim that Texas’s DNA-testing procedures violate the Due Process Clause is “indistinguishable” from the Court’s 2023 ruling in Reed v. Goertz that allowed a similar suit. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined Sotomayor and the Court’s three liberal justices; Justice Amy Coney Barrett concurred in part. Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, dissented, warning that the ruling weakens Article III standing requirements. Gutierrez, 47, was sentenced to death for the 1998 stabbing of 85-year-old mobile-home park manager Escolastica Harrison during a robbery in Brownsville that prosecutors said targeted roughly $600,000 she kept in cash. He acknowledges planning the burglary but maintains he never entered the home and argues that testing hairs, fingernail scrapings and other evidence could show he is ineligible for execution under Texas law. The Supreme Court has twice stayed his execution, most recently minutes before a scheduled lethal injection in July 2024. Thursday’s decision sends the case back to the Fifth Circuit and could broaden access to DNA testing for other inmates challenging state procedures. Gutierrez’s attorney, Shawn Nolan, said the ruling moves his client "one step closer" to proving he was wrongfully sentenced to death, while District Attorney Saenz said he will continue to oppose the testing as the litigation resumes.
