The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a stay of execution to a Texas inmate less than an hour before he was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection.
Ruben Gutierrez, 47, was scheduled to be executed just after 6 p.m. Central time before the Supreme Court issued a stay of execution pending a lower court ruling on the inmate’s claims regarding DNA testing.
It was not immediately clear how long the execution would be delayed, but Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokeswoman Hannah Haney told USA Today shortly after the verdict: “There will be no execution tonight.”
Here’s what you need to know about the incident.
Ruben Gutierrez’s conviction and the DNA testing debate
Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison, whose nephew described her as a pillar of the community and someone “beloved by everyone” in an interview with USA Today.
Gutierrez has admitted to planning to rob Harrison but has always maintained that he was outside the house when the two men he was with went in. He has said he never expected the situation to become violent or that a DNA test would prove his innocence, claims that have been repeatedly rejected on appeal.
Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz denied Gutierrez’s allegations, telling USA Today last week that his efforts were merely a “delaying tactic.”
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” he said. “I think the public is just frustrated with how long it’s taking to get justice, both for Mrs. Harrison and for all the victims that have been in these situations.”
According to court records, Gutierrez’s office argues that his arguments about DNA testing amount to “unreasonable delays.”
“Gutierrez knowingly failed to submit to DNA testing at his 1999 trial and has used that same strategic decision to delay his sentence for the past two decades,” prosecutors wrote this month.
USA Today attempted to reach attorneys for Saenz and Gutierrez for comment on Tuesday’s developments.
This is the seventh time Gutierrez’s execution has been postponed.
Tuesday’s postponement marked the seventh time Gutierrez’s execution has been scheduled and then canceled, which his lawyers said amounted to “torture” for him in a clemency petition that was rejected on Friday.
Through seven execution warrants since 2018, Gutierrez has spent “more than 575 days under death row watch” and could have already been in the execution chamber by Tuesday, when the Supreme Court’s decision was handed down.
“Mr. Gutierrez relies primarily on his faith in God to cope with this stress, but reports that the repeated changes to his death warrant have caused him to experience emotional ups and downs that make it especially difficult for him to cope and maintain his faith and hope,” the clemency petition states.
Escolastica Harrison was enjoying retirement when she was attacked at her home.
Harrison had been enjoying retirement after decades of balancing her job as a teacher with running a trailer park that served as a “staging ground” for struggling residents, her nephew, Alex Hernandez, told USA Today.
At the time of her death, another of Harrison’s nephews, Abel Cuellar, was living with her to help out at the trailer park after the death of her husband, and Cuellar’s friend, Gutierrez, would frequent Harrison’s trailer park to drink and socialize.
According to court records, Gutierrez, who was 21 at the time, married and a father of two, became acquainted with Harrison and began doing odd jobs for her, eventually discovering that she was hiding large amounts of cash in her home.
Gutierrez and two other men, Rene Garcia and Pedro Garcia, broke into Harrison’s home on September 5, 1998, to burgle the home.
Accounts of what happened at her house that night vary, but Gutierrez claims he waited outside and had no idea anything violent was going to happen. Either way, Harrison was beaten and stabbed approximately 13 times, leaving her “face down in a pool of blood,” according to court documents. Gutierrez believed Harrison had $600,000 in the house, but it’s unclear how much the men took. Prosecutors say it was at least $56,000.
Hernandez said it was his mother’s wishes to ensure that Gutierrez was executed. Before it was postponed, Hernandez was scheduled to be a witness to Tuesday’s execution.
