The United States Supreme Court listens to the case of Texas death inmates.

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The Supreme Court of the United States was apparently divided on Monday in the statement of a prison of the death of Texas that the State is constitutionally obliged to provide DNA evidence on the evidence that says it would prove that it did not kill an old woman during a heist.

Ruben Gutiérrez, 47, was sentenced to death for the murder of Harrison’s scholasticism of 1998 in Brownsville. The 85 -year -old woman was killed when Gutierrez and two other men broke into her mobile home to steal more than $ 600,000 in cash that she kept inside. The prosecutors said Gutiérrez stabbed and beat Harrison before helping him to steal his money.

While Gutiérrez has never played, he was a participant in stealing Harrison, he has maintained since his arrest, he was not the one who stabbed Harrison to death. Gutiérrez has spent the last decade looking for hair and blood DNA tests found in Harrison’s nails that, according to him, will show that he was not the murderer, but the courts of Texas and Luis Saenz, the district prosecutor of the County District of Cameron, have refused to prove the evidence available.

Gutiérrez and his legal team questioned a 2019 law that limited the evidence of DNA evidence after the conviction, which was initially confirmed by a Federal District Court before being attacked by the Court of Appeals of the 5th Circuit of the United States. The Supreme Court delayed the execution of Gutiérrez in July 2024 to review the 5th circuit ruling, which argued that Gutierrez lacked position to sue the day of the Cameron County that processed him by the constitutionality of the law.

During the oral arguments on Monday, Gutiérrez’s lawyer requested a ruling of the 2023 Supreme Court, also out of Texas, which challenged the Statute of DNA test limitations after the state’s conviction. But the failure in that case, Reed v. Goertz also established that if a lawsuit will provide a remedy depends on whether a favorable ruling would force a prosecutor to provide evidence.

The defense said that Gutierrez’s case was potentially debatable even with a favorable ruling, since the district prosecutor could still deny the evidence, but Judge Elena Kagan retreated the defense and compared Gutierrez’s complaint with that of Reed.

“If you looked at Reed’s complaint, it was, in reality, I thought, quite similar to this,” Kagan said.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh seemed to sympathize with the cause of Gutierrez, expressing that the potential inability of the favorable ruling to force DNA tests did not affect his position to Sue.

“I don’t see how we can say that something is not repairable just because the prosecutor will say: ‘I will not comply with a court order,” Kavanaugh said.

The defense of the Cameron County DA argued during the audience that even if DNA tests were not positive for Gutierrez, he would not clarify guilt in the crime or would do so not eligible for the death penalty. Gutierrez was convicted under the law of the parties, which allows the accused to be convicted by a jury if they help in a violent crime they understood could cause mortal damage.

Judge Samuel Alito aligned himself with the line of defense questions, asking whether the distinction of the court between the DNA’s request to an eligibility claim for the penalty of guilt or the death penalty would alter the will of the day of providing the evidence. Alito also questioned Gutierrez’s argument that mentioned evidence outside DNA tests, which raised “all kinds” of other problems out of reach of the case.

“It is really difficult for me to see, for that reason, how a decision on this distinction between eligibility of death and guilt could make a difference in the decision of the district prosecutor,” said Alito.

A decision on the case is expected to be delivered in the coming months. Gutierrez currently does not have an execution date, since the State expects a decision.

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