CASE PREVIEW
on Feb 13, 2025
at 11:38 am
The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, the place the state’s execution chamber is housed. (Mark by way of Flickr)
The Supreme Courtroom will hear oral arguments on Feb. 24 within the case of a person on Texas dying row who has lengthy tried to acquire postconviction DNA testing on proof that he says would exonerate him. Ruben Gutierrez was sentenced to dying for the 1998 homicide of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in Brownsville, Tex. Gutierrez has maintained his innocence and says DNA from a number of items of proof — akin to a hair and nail scrapings from Harrison’s finger and blood stains — would present that he was by no means in Harrison’s house. And if the DNA proof reveals that he by no means entered Harrison’s house, he contends, the jury wouldn’t have sentenced him to dying.
However a federal appeals court docket dominated final yr that Gutierrez doesn’t have a authorized proper to sue, generally known as standing, to carry federal civil rights claims difficult the constitutionality of the Texas legal guidelines governing DNA testing. Now the Supreme Courtroom will weigh in.
At his trial, prosecutors contended that Gutierrez and two different males – Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia – wished to steal $600,000 in money that Harrison, who didn’t belief banks, saved in her house. Harrison was overwhelmed and stabbed repeatedly with a screwdriver. Garcia and Gutierrez attacked Harrison, prosecutors alleged, whereas Gracia was the getaway driver.
Gutierrez concedes that he was concerned within the theft, however he insists now that he by no means entered Harrison’s house and didn’t take part in her homicide. Beneath Texas’s “regulation of events,” defendants could be convicted of capital homicide (which doesn’t make them routinely eligible for the dying penalty) even when they didn’t really kill the sufferer, so long as they participated within the underlying crime that led to the homicide. Gutierrez was convicted of capital homicide in 1999 and sentenced to dying.
The Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals, the state’s highest court docket for legal circumstances, upheld Gutierrez’s dying sentence in 2002.
When Gutierrez’s trial occurred, DNA testing was not required in Texas in capital circumstances during which the state was in search of the dying penalty – a coverage that has since modified. Gutierrez’s efforts to hunt that testing have been initially unsuccessful.
In 2011, the state court docket of legal appeals upheld a state trial court docket’s denial of Gutierrez’s request for DNA testing. It reasoned, amongst different issues, that the Texas regulation governing requests for DNA testing doesn’t enable testing when the outcomes of the testing would solely have an effect on the sentence {that a} prisoner obtained, fairly than the willpower of guilt or innocence. In different phrases, the Texas regulation would solely enable Gutierrez the DNA testing if he might show that, with that proof, he wouldn’t have been convicted in any respect.
Gutierrez additionally introduced a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2020 in opposition to Luis Saenz, the district legal professional who prosecuted him, and Felix Sauceda, the Brownsville police chief. He challenged the constitutionality of the state’s DNA testing procedures, arguing that they violated his proper to due course of – that’s, truthful remedy by the federal government.
In 2020, the Supreme Courtroom put Gutierrez’s execution on maintain to offer the decrease courts an opportunity to think about his separate claims that he was entitled to have a non secular advisor within the execution chamber with him. The state finally modified its coverage, resulting in the dismissal of these claims.
A federal district court docket in Brownsville agreed that the Texas scheme governing DNA testing and post-conviction aid violated his constitutional proper to due course of. On the one hand, Senior U.S. District Choose Hilda Tagle defined, Texas regulation provides prisoners the suitable to file a second request for post-conviction aid if they will present “clear and convincing” proof that they need to not have been sentenced to dying. However then again, Tagle continued, the state’s DNA testing legal guidelines take away a prisoner’s means to acquire that proof.
A divided panel of the U.S. Courtroom of Appeals for the fifth Circuit threw out that ruling in February 2024. It held that Gutierrez didn’t have a authorized proper, generally known as standing, to carry his lawsuit. The Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals held, the fifth Circuit famous, that even when DNA testing confirmed that Gutierrez by no means went inside Harrison’s home, he nonetheless would have been eligible for the dying penalty due to his function within the theft scheme that led to her homicide. Due to this fact the fifth Circuit reasoned, prosecutors wouldn’t be more likely to order DNA testing, and so the courts can’t present him with a treatment – one of many necessities for standing.
Choose Stephen Higginson dissented from the fifth Circuit’s determination. He would have allowed Gutierrez to carry his claims for DNA testing. In his view, there isn’t a “significant distinction” between Gutierrez’s case and that of Rodney Reed, one other man on dying row in Texas whose problem to the state’s DNA testing regulation the Supreme Courtroom permitted to maneuver ahead in 2023. Higginson acknowledged the “majority’s cautious tracing of the state-court case historical past and truthful inquiry into what the named state prosecutor may or won’t do” in Gutierrez’s case, however he didn’t consider that the Supreme Courtroom’s determination in Reed’s case hinged on “this nuance and distinction.” The court docket in Reed’s case, Higginson concluded, merely decided {that a} ruling “invalidating Texas’s DNA testing process would considerably improve the chance that the state prosecutor would grant entry to the requested DNA testing.”
The Supreme Courtroom as soon as once more put Gutierrez’s execution on maintain in July 2024, simply 20 minutes earlier than he was scheduled to be executed, to offer the justices time to think about his petition for assessment of the fifth Circuit’s ruling. The justices agreed in October 2024 to take up his case.
Within the Supreme Courtroom, Gutierrez argues that Reed reveals {that a} ruling in his favor can present him with a treatment. The fifth Circuit majority, he contends, as an alternative “formulated its personal novel check” to conclude that he couldn’t receive a treatment. Particularly, based mostly on the 2011 assertion by the Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals that Gutierrez would nonetheless be eligible for the dying penalty even when DNA testing confirmed that he by no means went inside Harrison’s house, Saenz and Sauceda insisted that they might not enable the DNA testing. The court docket of appeals cited that “steadfast refusal to conform” with the district court docket’s determination to assist its determination that Gutierrez doesn’t have standing to sue underneath federal civil rights legal guidelines.
However that evaluation “badly misapprehends the regulation of standing,” Gutierrez counters. A ruling from the Supreme Courtroom indicating that the Texas regulation on which Saenz and Sauceda are relying to disclaim DNA testing violates Gutierrez’s proper to due course of would supply him with the type of aid that may give him standing to sue. Saenz and Sauceda can at all times argue later in state court docket that, even with useful DNA outcomes, Gutierrez continues to be eligible for the dying penalty, however “no matter could occur in a future state case doesn’t deprive Gutierrez of standing on this present federal one.”
And though the Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals concluded that Gutierrez would nonetheless be eligible for the dying penalty even when the outcomes of the DNA testing confirmed that he by no means entered Harrison’s home, Gutierrez continues, there’s extra proof – by no means thought-about by the state court docket – that may assist to point out that he mustn’t have been sentenced to dying. For instance, he says, he has proof that the lead detective in his case lied on the stand and that Harrison’s nephew really “masterminded” the plot to rob her.
In its transient on the Supreme Courtroom, Texas pushes again in opposition to Gutierrez’s suggestion that the fifth Circuit adopted a “novel” check. As a substitute, it counters, “the Fifth Circuit’s determination represents a simple utility of Reed to the details of this case.”
Gutierrez’s drawback, the state contends, is that he has not proven that he would profit from a ruling in his favor. The Texas Courtroom of Legal Appeals has held not as soon as however thrice, over a 13-year interval, that “Gutierrez wouldn’t be eligible for DNA testing underneath state regulation even when he might use the outcomes to problem his sentence,” as a result of he would nonetheless be eligible for the dying penalty. Certainly, the state stresses, after the district court docket’s ruling in Gutierrez’s favor, Saenz has relied on that conclusion by the state appeals court docket to disclaim the DNA testing.
Furthermore, the state continues, there are different state-law the explanation why Saenz would deny the request for DNA testing – for instance, the state trial court docket discovered that Gutierrez was in search of DNA testing to delay his dying sentence, which might individually preclude his entry to the proof. The state appeals court docket didn’t deal with that concern when it upheld the trial court docket’s order, which successfully left the conclusion in place.
Gutierrez’s argument that the outcomes of DNA testing and his extra proof will present that he mustn’t have been sentenced to dying is just too speculative, the state suggests. And in any occasion, the state provides, for functions of figuring out whether or not a defendant is eligible for DNA testing, Texas courts can’t think about new proof however are as an alternative solely supposed to think about proof that was accessible when the trial occurred.
This text was initially printed at Howe on the Courtroom.
