Death row prisoner gets a last-minute stay
High court: State must justify banning clergy from joining prisoners in execution chamber
The U.S. Supreme Court granted a last-minute stay of execution for Texas death row prisoner Ruben Gutierrez Tuesday, saying state prison officials must first justify a rule that bans clergy from accompanying death row prisoners to the execution chamber.
In the high court ruling filed one hour before Gutierrez’s scheduled 6 p.m. death, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that a lower court should “promptly determine” whether allowing clergy in the death chamber presents “serious security problems.”
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice announced the ban in 2019 after a Buddhist man on death row made a similar appeal to the Supreme Court. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote at the time that
TDCJ officials could not deny last rites to prisoners based on their faiths, but left the “remedy going forward” up to the state.
On Monday, Gutierrez’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the case, citing what they say are dangerous conditions posed by COVID-19.
In a separate filing, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops also argued that the recent TDCJ rule violates the religious rights of Gutierrez, a lifelong Catholic.
“TDCJ is not merely making Gutierrez’s religious practice more difficult,” Catholic leaders wrote last week. “It is placing a direct, irrevocable prohibition on his sincere religious exercise, and at the most critical time for such exercise—when the soul is departing this world for the next.”
Gutierrez, 43, has for years
claimed he is innocent of the 1998 robbery and murder of Escolastica Harrison, who had roughly $600,000 in cash stashed inside her Brownsville trailer home at the time of her death.
He was initially set to die in 2018, but won multiple stays of execution — including one last week that was reversed by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday.
Gutierrez at one point admitted to being with two other accomplices during the robbery, but maintains he was not the person who killed Harrison. He has routinely called for the testing of DNA that he says could exonerate him.
His attorneys on Tuesday said prosecutors should use the time permitted by the court’s ruling to test that evidence.
“For years, Mr. Gutierrez has sought such testing in order to prove he did not commit the crime for which he was sentenced to death,” attorney Shawn Nolan said in a statement. “The state has fought such testing at every turn, but surely the public interest would be best served by allowing DNA testing while the court considers Mr. Gutierrez’s case, in order to prevent a wrongful execution in the future.”
Nolan added that it would be “simply atrocious” to deny Gutierrez’s requests for the tests while also barring him access to a spiritual adviser during his execution.