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Reluctant prosecutor cannot ‘manufacture mootness’…
U.S. Supreme Court docket
Reluctant prosecutor cannot ‘manufacture mootness’ or wreck standing for inmate looking for DNA take a look at, SCOTUS says
By Debra Cassens Weiss
June 26, 2025, 11:42 am CDT
Texas loss of life row inmate Ruben Gutierrez. (Picture supplied by the Texas Division of Felony Justice through the Related Press)
A Texas loss of life row inmate who desires DNA testing to ascertain that he wasn’t at a homicide scene, though he helped plan a theft there, has standing to problem the state legislation 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 legislation, though prosecutors may not grant a DNA take a look at if he wins. He has standing, it doesn’t matter what the prosecutor might do, the bulk stated 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 resolution.
A DNA take a look at would possibly have an effect on Gutierrez’s sentence however not his conviction. Texas legislation permits testing solely in instances that might result in an overturned conviction. Gutierrez claimed that the legislation violates his rights underneath the due course of clause.
Texas state legislation offers {that a} defendant might be discovered responsible of capital homicide, even after they had 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 triggered the loss of life, meant to kill or anticipated that an individual can be killed.
Gutierrez claims that he thought that his two accomplices would rob an empty cell residence within the 1998 incident and by no means anticipated that somebody can be killed. He twice advised police that he was by no means contained in the cell residence however later gave police a press release that stated he was contained in the cell residence 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 ascertain that solely his accomplices had been contained in the cell residence, 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 damage 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 take a look at in any occasion. A number of unbiased grounds help the prosecutor’s refusal to grant a DNA textual content, and the Texas legislation was only one motive, the federal appeals court docket stated.
Sotomayor stated the fifth Circuit erred by “remodeling the redressability inquiry right into a guess as as to if a good court docket resolution will in actual fact finally trigger the prosecutor to show over the proof.”
Sotomayor stated the fifth Circuit wrongly distinguished Reed v. Goertz, a 2023 Supreme Court docket resolution permitting a lawsuit by an inmate who sought a DNA take a look at in a federal civil rights swimsuit. The declaratory judgment requested by the inmate in that prior case was “no extra more likely to yield a change within the district legal professional’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 take a look at after Gutierrez received within the federal district court docket doesn’t make the inmate’s enchantment moot, Sotomayor stated.
“A procedural due course of declare, just like the one Gutierrez presses, isn’t mooted by the defendant’s mid-appeal promise that, regardless of the results of a lawsuit, the last word consequence won’t change,” Sotomayor wrote. “Holding in any other case would permit all method of defendants to fabricate mootness.”
In a partial concurrence and a concurrence within the judgment, Barrett stated 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 stated the bulk “blatantly alters” the Reed take a look at for standing.
“It then has the audacity to criticize the fifth Circuit for making use of the actual Reed take a look at,” Alito wrote.
Shawn Nolan, a lawyer for Gutierrez, launched this assertion: “Right now, Ruben Gutierrez is one step nearer to proving that he was wrongfully sentenced to loss of life. The court docket’s resolution makes clear that Ruben has a authorized proper to problem the Texas post-conviction DNA statute, which limits his entry to DNA testing to indicate he mustn’t have been sentenced to loss of life. We belief the Cameron County district legal professional will heed the Supreme Court docket’s resolution 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:
Anticipated noncompliance with court docket orders shouldn’t defeat standing, Kavanaugh says in DNA-test arguments
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