Supreme Court stays execution as death row inmate seeks DNA testing

July 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court granted a Texas death row inmate a stay of execution just minutes before he was to be put to death Tuesday night as he seeks DNA testing to prove his claims that he did commit the 1998 murder he's be sentenced to die for.

Ruben Gutierrez, 42, was to to have his sentence of death by lethal injection executed Tuesday at the Huntsville prison for stabbing 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison to death and stealing more than $56,000 from the trailer park owner on Sept. 5, 1998.

But shortly before he was to receive the single dose of Pentobarbital, the high court issued a stay of execution without any noted dissents.

The order states the stay will be in effect indefinitely until the justices decide on whether to agree to his request to review his appeal.

"Should the petition for a writ of certiorari be denied, this stay shall terminate automatically," the order from Justice Samuel Alito said.

Gutierrez was 21 years old at the time Harrison was killed over the tens of thousands of dollars she kept in a safe at her residence. An autopsy showed she was stabbed in the head 13 times with two different screw drivers.

His lawyers argue that their client helped plan the robbery along with his two codefendants, Rene Garcia and Pedro Garza, but did not help them kill the woman.

For nearly 15 years, Gutierrez has sought from both state and federal courts access to finger nail scrapings and a blood-stained shirt from Harrison as well as a loose hair found wrapped around one of her fingers for DNA testing, the results of which he says will prove his innocence.

His attempts to test the crime scene DNA have pinged through the courts for years, and his lawyers in late June asked the Supreme Court to intervene on the grounds that Gutierrez is being denied his constitutional right to potentially exculpatory evidence by Texas law concerning post-conviction DNA testing.

They argue that Texas state law has since changed its DNA testing protocol to require mandatory testing of all items with biological material in capital cases where the state pursues the death penalty.

"If this crime were committed today, DNA testing of these items would have already happened," they argued in the court document , "and Gutierrez never would have been sentenced to death."

Tuesday was the second time the Supreme Court has issued an 11th-hour stay to Gutierrez's scheduled execution.

In June of 2020, an hour before Gutierrez was to be executed, the justices granted his request for a stay over his challenge to the state's rule preventing religious witnesses from accompanying death row inmates into the death chamber.

Texas has executed two people this year, and is scheduled to execute four more this year, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's website .

The entire country has executed nine people as of late June, a tally from the Death Penalty Information Center shows.