(Washington) The US Supreme Court on Tuesday suspended the scheduled execution of a man sentenced to death for the murder of an octogenarian woman in 1998 in Texas, in the southern United States.
The execution of Ruben Gutierrez, 47, sentenced to death in 1999 for the murder of a mobile home park manager, Escolastica Harrison, 85, whom he had come to rob with two accomplices in Brownsville, has already been stayed several times in recent years, including in 2020 by the Supreme Court.
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.
After the convict’s final appeal to the Texas courts was rejected, his lawyers appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
The court, in a decision signed by Justice Samuel Alito, granted him a stay Tuesday while it determines whether to take up his appeal, which is expected to take several months.
If she ultimately decides not to take it up, the suspension would be automatically lifted and the execution could be rescheduled, she emphasizes.
“We are hopeful that now that the Court has intervened to stop this execution, we will finally be able to conduct the DNA testing to prove that Mr. Gutierrez should not be executed, now or in the future,” his attorney, Shawn Nolan, said in a statement.
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 pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence and the other, released 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 after police threatened to arrest his wife and place his children in care.
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.