Docket 23-7809
Gutierrez v. Saenz
DecidedJun 26, 2025
6-3decision
Source: CourtListener.
Death row inmate may sue in federal court to challenge Texas's DNA testing rules
What it does
The Court held that Ruben Gutierrez has standing to sue in federal court under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, challenging Texas's post-conviction DNA testing law (Chapter 64) as a violation of due process. A favorable court ruling declaring those procedures unconstitutional would count as sufficient "redress" of his injury — even if the prosecutor might later find other reasons to deny testing. The Fifth Circuit's dismissal of his lawsuit for lack of standing is reversed, and the case is sent back for further proceedings.
Who benefits
People convicted of crimes in Texas (and potentially other states) who seek post-conviction DNA testing and have been denied access to that testing under state procedures. Death row inmates in particular who want to challenge their sentences — not just their underlying convictions — through DNA evidence.
Who is affected
State prosecutors who hold custody of untested biological evidence from criminal cases, who may now face federal civil rights lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state DNA testing procedures. Texas officials administering Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure are directly affected.
Practical impact
Gutierrez's federal lawsuit is revived and sent back to lower courts, where the merits of his due process challenge to Texas's DNA testing rules will now be decided. More broadly, the ruling confirms that state prisoners can use federal § 1983 civil rights lawsuits to challenge the constitutionality of state post-conviction DNA testing procedures, and that prosecutors who deny access to evidence cannot defeat standing simply by asserting they will continue to deny testing regardless of a court ruling.
Majority reasoning
The majority held that this case is controlled by the Court's 2023 decision in Reed v. Goertz, where nearly identical facts led the Court to find standing for another Texas death row inmate challenging the same DNA testing law. The Court reasoned that Gutierrez satisfied all three requirements for standing: he suffered a concrete injury (being denied access to DNA evidence), the local prosecutor caused that injury by refusing to release the evidence, and a favorable court ruling declaring Texas's procedures unconstitutional would redress that injury by eliminating the prosecutor's legal justification for withholding the evidence. The majority rejected the Fifth Circuit's reasoning that standing was defeated because the prosecutor would "likely" still deny testing even after a court ruling, explaining that the proper focus of the standing inquiry is the plaintiff's complaint — not the narrow declaratory judgment the district court happened to issue. The Court also rejected the argument that the case was moot because the prosecutor refused testing even after the district court ruled in Gutierrez's favor, holding that a defendant cannot manufacture mootness by promising the same outcome regardless of what procedures a court orders.
Dissent reasoning
Justice Alito's dissent (joined by Thomas and Gorsuch) argued that the majority distorted the Reed standard by focusing only on the first sentence of Reed's redressability analysis while ignoring the rest, which required that a favorable ruling be "substantially likely" to prompt the prosecutor to allow DNA testing. The dissent contended that, unlike in Reed — where striking down the chain-of-custody rule would have opened up 21 additional items for testing including the murder weapon — a ruling in Gutierrez's favor would remove only one of three independent reasons the Texas courts gave for denying testing, leaving the other two intact. Because Texas courts have repeatedly held that even favorable DNA results would not change Gutierrez's conviction or death sentence under the "law of parties," the dissent argued there is no substantial likelihood that the prosecutor would ever release the evidence for testing. Justice Thomas wrote separately to argue that the entire line of cases recognizing a "liberty interest" in state-created post-conviction procedures is wrong as a matter of original constitutional meaning, contending that "liberty" in the Fourteenth Amendment referred only to freedom from physical restraint and did not include government-created entitlements — and that the Court should correct that error rather than extend it further.
Constitutional question
Does a death row inmate have legal standing under Article III of the Constitution to bring a federal civil rights lawsuit challenging Texas's post-conviction DNA testing procedures as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?
Precedent changed
Extends Reed v. Goertz, 598 U.S. 230 (2023), applying its standing analysis to a prisoner challenging DNA testing denial on death-penalty-eligibility grounds, not just conviction-based grounds.