The U.S. Supreme Court decided on Oct. 4 to hear the death row appeal of Ruben Gutierrez, who argues that DNA testing of the crime scene evidence would clear him.
The court granted the petition in Gutierrez v. Saenz without comment. No justices dissented. The respondent, Luis Saenz, is the district attorney for Cameron County, Texas.
The new ruling was made after the Supreme Court stayed the execution of Gutierrez on June 16 to give it time to consider his petition. The order to halt the lethal injection was issued 20 minutes before it was scheduled to be carried out.
Gutierrez, who was convicted in the 1998 murder of a mobile home park manager in Texas, argues that a federal appeals court erred when it added additional conditions to the Supreme Court’s existing precedent governing post-conviction DNA testing….