NEWS: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals just granted a stay of execution for Ruben Gutierrez. Ruben will NOT be executed on October 30th. Cameron County courts completely bungled the legal process dealing with the execution warrant. More details soon.
When an execution date is set, Texas law requires the county court to deliver the execution warrant to the county sheriff. The warrant must have the court’s seal affixed. The sheriff then delivers the warrant to the Department of Criminal Justice. This procedure was not followed.
The Cameron County court sent Ruben Gutierrez’ death warrant directly to the Department of Criminal Justice. This was not in compliance with Texas law.
To make matters worse, there were apparently two different execution warrants floating around at the same time. One warrant did have the court’s seal affixed but included incorrect dates and cited laws that haven’t been in effect for years.
The second execution warrant did include the correct dates but did not have a court seal affixed. This was also not in compliance with Texas law. No seal, no warrant.
Texas can ask to reset Ruben’s execution date in the future, but this provides more time for his legal team to push for DNA testing that was never done.
How can we trust Texas to execute people when state officials can’t even follow these basic legal requirements?
