U.S. Supreme Court docket
Reluctant prosecutor cannot ‘manufacture mootness’ or break standing for inmate in search of DNA check, SCOTUS says
June 26, 2025, 11:42 am CDT
Texas loss of life row inmate Ruben Gutierrez. (Picture supplied by the Texas Division of Legal Justice by way of the Related Press)
A Texas loss of life row inmate who desires DNA testing to determine that he wasn’t at a homicide scene, though he helped plan a theft there, has standing to problem the state regulation governing testing procedures, the U.S. Supreme Court docket dominated Thursday.
The Supreme Court docket dominated 6-3 for Texas inmate Ruben Gutierrez, who claims that he might problem the regulation, regardless that prosecutors may not grant a DNA check if he wins. He has standing, it doesn’t matter what the prosecutor could do, the bulk mentioned in an opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Her opinion was joined in full by the opposite liberal justices on the excessive court docket and by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined all however one part of Sotomayor’s determination.
A DNA check would possibly have an effect on Gutierrez’s sentence however not his conviction. Texas regulation permits testing solely in instances that might result in an overturned conviction. Gutierrez claimed that the regulation violates his rights underneath the due course of clause.
Texas state regulation gives {that a} defendant might be discovered responsible of capital homicide, even after they have been merely a celebration to the crime leading to loss of life. However a defendant can’t be sentenced to loss of life except they brought on the loss of life, supposed to kill or anticipated that an individual can be killed.
Gutierrez claims that he thought that his two accomplices would rob an empty cell house within the 1998 incident and by no means anticipated that somebody can be killed. He twice informed police that he was by no means contained in the cell house however later gave police an announcement that mentioned he was contained in the cell house whereas an confederate fatally stabbed Escolastica Harrison with a screwdriver. He now claims that the confession was coerced.
Gutierrez has sought DNA testing since 2010 to determine that solely his accomplices have been contained in the cell house, and he’s ineligible for the loss of life penalty.
The fifth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals at New Orleans had held that Gutierrez’s claimed harm couldn’t be redressed by a win in his problem to the statute as a result of the prosecutor can be unlikely to permit the DNA check in any occasion. A number of impartial grounds help the prosecutor’s refusal to grant a DNA textual content, and the Texas regulation was only one cause, the federal appeals court docket mentioned.
Sotomayor mentioned the fifth Circuit erred by “reworking the redressability inquiry right into a guess as as to if a good court docket determination will in reality in the end trigger the prosecutor to show over the proof.”
Sotomayor mentioned the fifth Circuit wrongly distinguished Reed v. Goertz, a 2023 Supreme Court docket determination permitting a lawsuit by an inmate who sought a DNA check in a federal civil rights swimsuit. The declaratory judgment requested by the inmate in that prior case was “no extra prone to yield a change within the district lawyer’s conduct than the one Gutierrez sought right here,” Sotomayor wrote.
The truth that the prosecutor in Gutierrez’s case refused to permit the DNA check after Gutierrez gained within the federal district court docket doesn’t make the inmate’s enchantment moot, Sotomayor mentioned.
“A procedural due course of declare, just like the one Gutierrez presses, just isn’t mooted by the defendant’s mid-appeal promise that, irrespective of the results of a lawsuit, the last word consequence is not going to change,” Sotomayor wrote. “Holding in any other case would enable all method of defendants to fabricate mootness.”
In a partial concurrence and a concurrence within the judgment, Barrett mentioned Sotomayor’s opinion “muddies the waters of standing doctrine” by “borrowing from our somewhat-relaxed redressability inquiry in administrative-law procedural-injury instances.”
Justice Samuel Alito dissented in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Alito mentioned the bulk “blatantly alters” the Reed check for standing.
“It then has the audacity to criticize the fifth Circuit for making use of the true Reed check,” Alito wrote.
Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Gutierrez, launched this assertion: “As we speak, Ruben Gutierrez is one step nearer to proving that he was wrongfully sentenced to loss of life. The court docket’s determination makes clear that Ruben has a authorized proper to problem the Texas post-conviction DNA statute, which limits his entry to DNA testing to point out he shouldn’t have been sentenced to loss of life. We belief the Cameron County district lawyer will heed the Supreme Court docket’s determination and supply us, in the end, with entry to the in depth forensic proof in Ruben’s case.”
The case is Gutierrez v. Saenz.
Hat tip SCOTUSblog, which had early protection of the choice.
See additionally:
Write a letter to the editor, share a narrative tip or replace, or report an error.
