Ruben Gutierrez had been sentenced to death for the 1998 stabbing of Scholastica Harrison at her home in Brownsville, allegedly during an attempt to steal more than $600,000 dollars, however, he and his defense have always maintained that there is no physical or forensic evidence linking him to the murder.
Despite this, The Supreme Court suspended the execution scheduled for this Tuesday minutes before the appointed time and argued that a request for Gutiérrez’s case to be reviewed by a higher judicial authority than the one that tried him is pending resolution.
For years, Gutierrez has sought DNA evidence that he says would help prove he did not stab and kill an 85-year-old woman decades ago.
Gutierrez has maintained his innocence and his lawyers had requested a stay of execution, arguing that Texas denied him the right to take a post-conviction DNA test that they say would exonerate him of murder.
His lawyers argue that several items recovered from the crime sceneincluding scrapings of Harrison’s nails, a loose hair wrapped around one of his fingers and several blood samples from inside his home, were never tested.
For their part, the authorities claim that Gutiérrez, along with two other people – René García and Pedro Garza – broke into the place where Harrison lived to steal money that she had kept in a safe.
The elderly woman was repeatedly beaten and stabbed several times in the head, resulting in her death. The subject and his accomplices fled the residence with a minimum of $56,000 dollars.according to Texas prison authorities.
In 1999, a jury convicted Gutierrez and he has been behind bars ever since.His execution has been postponed several times, mainly because the defendant’s lawyer has requested that a priest be present when his client is given the lethal injection.
Prosecutors have said the request for DNA testing is a delaying tactic and that Gutierrez was convicted based on a range of evidence, including a confession in which he admitted planning the robbery.
Harrison’s grandson, Alex Hernandez, was to be present at the execution, which was to take place at the State Correctional Facility in Huntsville, north of Houston, local media reported.
There are currently 2,244 prisoners on death row in the US,Most of them in California, Florida and Texas, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 1,591 people have been executed in the United States, 588 of them in Texas.
*With information from EFE.
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