Execution set after stay is lifted for death row inmate
A federal appeals court has lifted the stay of execution on Friday for a death row prisoner who seeks DNA testing of evidence pointing to his innocence.
On Tuesday, a federal judge granted a stay of execution to Ruben Gutierrez, a 43-year-old who has maintained his innocence in the 1998 killing of a Brownsville trailer park owner. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling on Friday night. Gutierrez’s execution is scheduled for June 16.
Gutierrez was initially set to be executed in 2018 for the killing of Escolastica Harrison. He was convicted of stabbing Harrison to death during a robbery along with two other accomplices. The accomplices pointed to Gutierrez as the killer but when investigators questioned him, Gutierrez offered different versions of events, at one point admitting he was present but not the killer during the deadly robbery. He has consistently demanded DNA testing that he claims would exonerate him.
In a written opinion, the Fifth Circuit Court judges wrote that the district court judge who granted Gutierrez’s stay of execution “abused its discretion” because his DNA claims are “time-barred and meritless.” The judges wrote that Gutierrez failed to show how the DNA testing he requested would negate his guilt “at this late date.”
In a statement, Shawn Nolan, one of Gutierrez’s attorneys, continued to call for testing of DNA evidence before his execution.
“The police collected several pieces of evidence containing biological material that can prove that
Mr. Gutierrez did not kill Escolastica Harrison,” Nolan said. “There is no physical evidence connecting Mr. Gutierrez to this crime. The State should be leading the search for the truth, rather than obstructing it.”
Brownsville Federal District Court Judge Hilda Tagle agreed with those arguments, writing earlier this week that Gutierrez “has made a showing of likelihood of success on the merits of at least one of his DNA or executionchamber claims.”
Nolan added that Gutierrez’s legal team would continue to challenge his denial of access to a chaplain under rules adopted last year by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The denial of a chaplain led Catholic leaders in Texas to intervene in Gutierrez’s execution. In a Friday filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals’ Fifth District, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops asked that Gutierrez be provided access to clergy during his execution.
In its written opinion, the Fifth Court of Appeals judges said Gutierrez’s chaplain claims were “meritless” because the denial of a chaplain did not rise to the level of being a substantial burden on his right to worship.
In 2019, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced that it would no longer allow chaplains to accompany those on death row to the execution chamber, a decision that was immediately challenged by a coalition of faith groups.
TDCJ announced the decision after the U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay to Patrick Murphy, a Buddhist who had been denied access to a spiritual adviser in the execution chamber.
“As this court has repeatedly held, governmental discrimination against religion — in particular, discrimination against religious persons, religious organizations and religious speech — violates the Constitution,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote at the time. “The choice of remedy going forward is up to the state. What the state may not do, in my view, is allow Christian or Muslim inmates but not Buddhist inmates to have a religious adviser of their religion in the execution room.”