The Supreme Court has ruled for a Texas death row inmate who's seeking DNA testing to show he should be ineligible for execution.

Ruben Gutierrez wants to be able to sue prosecutors to compel them to test evidence that he says will prove he did not kill a Brownsville woman in 1998.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of a Texas man on death row who has long argued that DNA testing would help prove he didn't kill an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery decades ago.

Texas death row inmate Ruben Gutierrez was only 20 minutes away from being executed when the U.S. Supreme Court granted his request to stay his lethal injection at the state prison in Huntsville.

Ruben Gutierrez was sentenced to death for the 1998 Brownsville murder of an elderly woman. His execution was stayed in July.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for a Texas man shortly before he was to receive a lethal injection in a killing decades ago.

Another Texas inmate has had his execution delayed over claims the state is violating his religious freedom by not letting his spiritual adviser lay hands on him at the time of his lethal injection.

Two years after the Texas prison system barred all spiritual advisers from the state’s death chamber, the agency has reversed course.

FILE - In this Nov. 6, 2020, file photo the Supreme Court is seen as sundown in Washington. The Supreme Court is telling a lower court to continue to consider a case brought by a Texas death row inmate protesting a policy that means a chaplain cant accompany him into the death chamber. That change came after the Supreme Court halted the execution of another inmate, Patrick Murphy, who requested a Buddhist adviser be allowed in the chamber. By changing the policy, Texas argued all inmates were being treated the same. Gutierrez is on death row for fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman.

Texas juries also issued their fewest new death sentences since 1974, as the pandemic shut down trials, according to a year-end report by the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. The number of death sentences and executions in Texas and across the U.S. has been steadily decreasing over the last two decades. Texas executions peaked in 2000, when 40 people were put to death. Garza has pledged to not seek death sentences and to review all post-conviction death penalty cases for any legal or evidentiary issues. Black people, who account for about 13% of the state’s population, make up more than 44% of Texas death row inmates.

Greg Abbott or the U.S. Supreme Court stops the execution, it will be the first in Texas carried out since the coronavirus pandemic swept the state. A federal judge halted the execution last week to review arguments on the religious policy and DNA testing, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling Friday, putting the execution back on the calendar. The appeals court agreed Friday, noting that in Texas, a defendant can be sentenced to death for acting as an accomplice in a capital murder. If it proceeds, Gutierrez's execution would be the third this year in Texas, a relatively low number for the state tied to the long gap since the pandemic began.