U.S. Supreme Court halts Texas execution at last minute

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday granted a temporary halt to a convicted murderer's execution, shortly before the man was set to be given a lethal injection in Texas.

Ruben Gutierrez, 47, was sentenced to death for taking part in the 1998 killing of Escolastica Harrison, an elderly manager of a mobile home park in the city of Brownsville, which borders Mexico.

Gutierrez and two other men were accused of planning to rob Harrison, who kept some $600,000 at home out of a distrust of banks, according to court documents, before beating and stabbing her to death.

Of his two co-defendants, one pleaded guilty and is serving a life sentence, while the other is still on the run.

Gutierrez maintains he is innocent, and for over ten years has been demanding that DNA samples collected at the scene be analyzed.

He insists that he did not enter the mobile home, and that he was unaware the other two intended to kill Harrison.

His lawyers have argued that there was no physical evidence of Gutierrez's presence at the crime scene, and that he only confessed when police threatened to arrest his wife and place his children in foster care.

After his final appeal was rejected in lower courts, Gutierrez appealed to the US Supreme Court, which granted a temporary halt Tuesday while it considers whether to take up the case.

The Supreme Court's order said if it ultimately decided not to hear the case, its stay of the execution would "terminate automatically."

It is not the first time the Supreme Court has granted Gutierrez a last-minute reprieve. In 2020 the court halted his execution after Texas authorities denied his request to have a priest present in the death chamber.

"We are hopeful that now the court has stepped in to stop this execution, we can ultimately accomplish the DNA testing to prove that Mr. Gutierrez should not be executed now or in the future," attorney Shawn Nolan said in a statement.

Texas has so far executed two people this year, while ten inmates nationwide have been put to death.

A total of 24 executions were carried out in United States in 2023, all by lethal injection.

The death penalty has been abolished in 23 states, while six others (Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Tennessee) have moratoriums in place.