(Washington) An American man sentenced to death for the murder of an octogenarian woman in 1998 is due to be executed Tuesday in Texas, in the southern United States.
Ruben Gutierrez, 47, was sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of a mobile home park manager, Escolastica Harrison, 85, whom he and two accomplices had robbed in Brownsville.
He claims to be innocent, having demanded in vain for more than ten years the analysis of DNA samples collected at the scene of the crime that could exonerate him. Ruben Gutierrez assures that he did not enter the mobile home, unlike his accomplices, and that he was unaware of their intention to kill the victim, who was beaten and stabbed.
If the execution takes place, it will be the third since the beginning of the year in Texas and the tenth in the United States, in addition to the one cancelled in extremis on February 28 in Idaho (northwest), due to the inability to administer the lethal solution to the condemned man within the legal time limit.
The three defendants were charged with planning to rob the octogenarian, who, out of distrust of banks, kept about $600,000 in her home, according to court documents. Each blamed the murder on the other two.
Of Ruben Gutierrez’s two co-defendants, one has pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence and the other, who is free on bail, is on the run. His lawyers argue that there is no physical evidence that he was at the crime scene and that he only confessed when police threatened to arrest his wife and place his children in a shelter.
The condemned man’s final appeal to the Texas courts was rejected and his lawyers have appealed to the US Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in the coming hours. Ruben Gutierrez’s execution has already been postponed in extremis several times for other reasons.
A total of 24 executions were carried out in the United States in 2023, all by lethal injection.
The death penalty has been abolished in 23 of the 50 US states. Six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee) observe a moratorium on executions by decision of the governor.