By 6-3 vote, Supreme Court in Gutierrez that death row defendant has standing to challenge Texas’s DNA testing procedures

The Supreme Court this morning handed down a standing ruling in a capital case via Guitierrez v. Saenz, No. 23-7809 (S. Ct. June 26, 2025) (available here). The vote was 6-3, and here are the particulars of the votes of the Justices:

SOTOMAYOR, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and KAGAN, KAVANAUGH, and JACKSON, JJ., joined, and in which BARRETT, J., joined as to all but Part II.B.2. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting opinion. ALITO, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which THOMAS and GORSUCH, JJ., joined.

Here is how Justice Sotomayor’s opinion for the Court gets started:

For nearly 15 years, petitioner Ruben Gutierrez has sought DNA testing of evidence that, he says, will help him prove he was never at the scene of the murder he was convicted of committing. When the local prosecutor refused to test the evidence in his custody, Gutierrez filed suit under Rev. Stat. §1979, 42 U.S.C. §1983, arguing that Texas’s procedures for obtaining DNA testing violated his rights under the Due Process Clause. The District Court agreed and granted a declaratory judgment to that effect.

The Fifth Circuit, however, held that Gutierrez lacked standing to bring his §1983 suit, reasoning that, even if a federal court declared Texas’s procedures unconstitutional, the local prosecutor would be unlikely to turn over the physical evidence for DNA testing.  That holding contravenes Reed v. Goertz, 598 U.S. 230 (2023), where this Court decided on analogous facts that another Texas prisoner had standing to sue the local prosecutor who denied him access to DNA testing. Id., at 234. Put simply, Reed held that a federal court order declaring “that Texas’s post-conviction DNA testing procedures violate due process” would redress the prisoner’s claimed injury by “eliminat[ing]” the state prosecutor’s reliance on Article 64 as a reason for denying DNA testing. Ibid.

Here is how Justice Alito’s principal dissent gets started:

The Court and I agree on one thing: we should decide this case based on the test adopted in Reed v. Goertz, 598 U.S. 230, 234 (2023). After that, however, the majority veers sharply off course.  First, it blatantly alters the Reed test.  See ante, at 1–2, 8, 10.  Second, it then has the audacity to criticize the Fifth Circuit for applying the real Reed test. See ante, at 9.  Third, it ignores critical differences between the situation in Reed and the situation here.  See ante, at 9–11.  Fourth, it paints a misleading picture of underlying facts and Gutierrez’s decades-long litigation campaign. See ante, at 2–6.  Fifth, it fails to recognize the limited scope of the declaratory judgment at issue. See ante, at 9. And sixth, it ignores lawful and binding Texas law regarding the facts that may be considered when a prisoner seeks DNA testing. See ibid.