Gutierrez v. Saenz

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Syllabus
GUTIERREZ v. SAENZ et al.
certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the fth circuit
No. 23–7809. Argued February 24, 2025—Decided June 26, 2025
In 1998, Texas charged Ruben Gutierrez with capital murder for his
involvement in the killing of Escolastica Harrison. The State's theory
at trial was that Gutierrez wielded one of the two screwdrivers used to
stab Harrison to death in her mobile home. The jury convicted Gutier-
rez of capital murder. At the sentencing phase of Gutierrez's trial, the
jury was required to answer whether Texas proved beyond a reasonable
doubt that Gutierrez “actually caused” Harrison's death or, if not, that
he “intended to kill [her]” or “anticipated that a human life would be
taken.” Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(2)(b)(2). The jury an-
swered yes, and Gutierrez was sentenced to death.
For nearly 15 years, Gutierrez has sought DNA testing of evidence
he claims would prove he was not in Harrison's home the night of the
murder. Texas's Article 64 allows DNA testing where a “convicted per-
son establishes by a preponderance of the evidence” that he “would not
have been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained through
DNA testing,” among other criteria. Art. 64.03(a)(2). Invoking Arti-
cle 64, Gutierrez twice moved in state court for DNA testing of untested
crime scene evidence. The trial court denied his frst request in 2010,
and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) affrmed. The court
reasoned that even if Gutierrez's DNA was not found on the tested
items, that would not establish his innocence of capital murder because
he would still be a party to the robbery that resulted in Harrison's
death. The court concluded that Gutierrez could not use Article 64 to
show he was wrongly sentenced to death unless he could also establish
his innocence of the underlying crime. In 2019, Gutierrez again sought
DNA testing, but Texas courts denied his motion. On appeal, the
TCCA reiterated that DNA testing was not available to show only death
penalty ineligibility.
Gutierrez then fled suit in federal court under 42 U. S. C. § 1983
against Luis Saenz, the district attorney who has custody of the untes-
ted evidence. Gutierrez argued that Texas's DNA testing procedures
violated his liberty interests in utilizing state postconviction proce-
dures. The District Court agreed and granted declaratory relief, fnd-
ing it fundamentally unfair that Texas gives prisoners the right to chal-
lenge their death sentence through habeas petitions but prevents them

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Syllabus
from obtaining DNA testing to support those petitions unless they can
establish innocence of the underlying crime. The Fifth Circuit vacated
the District Court's judgment and held that Gutierrez lacked standing to
bring his § 1983 suit, fnding that his claimed injury was not redressable
because a declaratory judgment would be unlikely to cause the prosecu-
tor to “reverse course and allow testing.” 93 F. 4th 267, 272.
Held: Gutierrez has standing to bring his § 1983 claim challenging Texas's
postconviction DNA testing procedures under the Due Process Clause.
Pp. 314–321.
(a) Individuals convicted of crimes in state court “have a liberty in-
terest in demonstrating [their] innocence with new evidence under state
law.” District Attorney's Offce for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne,
557 U. S. 52, 68. For that reason, a state-created right to postconviction
procedures can sometimes create rights to other procedures essential to
realizing the state-created right. In Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U. S. 521,
the Court held that a Texas prisoner could fle a due process claim under
§ 1983 against a prosecutor where the prisoner alleged that the prosecu-
tor's refusal to turn over evidence deprived him of his liberty interests
in utilizing state procedures to obtain reversal of his conviction or to
obtain a pardon or reduction of his sentence. The Court reasoned that,
while the prisoner could not challenge in federal court the state court
decisions denying his Article 64 motions, he could allege in a federal
§ 1983 action that Article 64 unconstitutionally prevented him from ob-
taining such testing.
The question of a state prisoner's standing to bring a due process
claim against the custodian of his evidence was frst addressed in Reed
v. Goertz, 598 U. S. 230, where the Court confronted another challenge
to Texas's postconviction DNA testing law. Reed alleged, among other
things, that Article 64's chain-of-custody requirement was unconstitu-
tional and effectively prevented many individuals from obtaining DNA
testing. The Court held that Reed had standing to pursue declaratory
relief. First, Reed adequately alleged an injury: denial of access to the
requested evidence. Second, the state prosecutor caused Reed's injury
by denying access to the evidence. Finally, if a federal court concluded
that Texas's postconviction DNA testing procedures violate due process,
the state prosecutor's justifcation for denying DNA testing would be
eliminated, thereby removing the barrier between Reed and the re-
quested testing. The same is true here. Like Reed, Gutierrez alleges
that the local prosecutor's denial of his DNA testing request deprived
him of his liberty interests in utilizing state procedures to obtain an
acquittal or sentence reduction. As in Reed, the declaratory judgment
Gutierrez seeks would redress that injury by changing the legal status

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Syllabus
of
the parties and eliminating the state prosecutor's allegedly unlawful
justifcation for denying DNA testing. Pp. 314–316.
(b) The Fifth Circuit recognized the clear parallels between this case
and Reed but distinguished the cases, reasoning that the local prosecu-
tor in this case was unlikely to allow testing even if a federal court
declared that Texas may not deny DNA testing that would affect only
the punishment stage. Respondents, too, argue that Gutierrez lacks
standing because the District Court's reason for declaring part of Arti-
cle 64 unconstitutional was only one of several independent state-law
grounds supporting the prosecutor's decision to deny access to the evi-
dence. But this attempt to distinguish Reed fails twice over.
First, to the extent the Fifth Circuit based its assessment of redress-
ability on the declaratory judgment the District Court later issued,
rather than Gutierrez's complaint, it turned the Article III standing in-
quiry on its head. Gutierrez's standing does not depend on the relief
the District Court ultimately granted on the merits. The proper focus
of the standing inquiry is the complaint, and Gutierrez's complaint chal-
lenges not just Article 64's limitation to actual innocence claims, but also
the other barriers Article 64 erects between Gutierrez and DNA testing.
Second, and more fundamentally, the Fifth Circuit erred in transforming
the redressability inquiry into a guess about whether a favorable court
decision will ultimately result in the prosecutor turning over the DNA
evidence. In Reed, the Court reasoned that, if a federal court concludes
that Texas's postconviction DNA testing procedures violate due process,
that court order would redress the injury by eliminating the state prose-
cutor's reliance on Article 64 as a reason for denying DNA testing. The
same is true here. A declaratory judgment in Gutierrez's favor would
redress his injury by removing the allegedly unconstitutional barrier
Article 64 erected between Gutierrez and the requested testing. The
Court in Reed was unmoved by the prosecutor's assertion that a declara-
tory judgment would not change his ultimate decision to turn over the
evidence. The reason is simple: That a prosecutor might eventually
fnd another reason to deny a prisoner's DNA testing request does not
eliminate the prisoner's standing to argue that the cited reasons vio-
lated his rights under the Due Process Clause. Pp. 316–320.
(c) Respondents also assert that this case is now moot because the
state prosecutor refused Gutierrez's DNA testing request even after the
District Court issued the declaratory judgment. That claim fails, too.
A procedural due process claim like Gutierrez's is not mooted by the
defendant's mid-appeal promise that, regardless of the lawsuit's out-
come, the ultimate result will remain the same. Holding otherwise
would allow defendants to manufacture mootness by ensuring that, no
matter what procedures a court requires them to employ, the same sub-

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Opinion of the Court
stantive outcome will follow. Article III requires no such result.
Pp. 320–321.
93 F. 4th 267, reversed and remanded.
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., fled an opin-
ion concurring in part and concurring in the judgment, post, p. 321.
Thomas, J., fled a dissenting opinion, post, p. 322. Alito, J., fled a dis-
senting opinion, in which Thomas and Gorsuch, JJ., joined, post, p. 338.
Anne Elizabeth Fisher argued the cause for petitioner.
With her on the briefs were Lisa Evans Lewis, Joseph W.
Luby, and Joanne M. Heisey.
William F. Cole, Deputy Solicitor General of Texas, ar-
gued the cause for respondents. With him on the brief were
Ken Paxton, Attorney General, Aaron L. Nielson, Solicitor
General, Brent Webster, First Assistant Attorney General,
Cameron Fraser, Assistant Solicitor General, and Eric Abels
and Jefferson D. Clendenin, Assistant Attorneys General.*
Justice Sotomayor delivered the opinion of the Court.
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 con-
victed of committing. When the local prosecutor refused to
test the evidence in his custody, Gutierrez fled suit under
Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983, arguing that Texas's pro-
*Elizabeth B. Wydra and Brianne J. Gorod fled a brief for the Constitu-
tional Accountability Center as amicus curiae urging reversal.
A brief of amici curiae urging affrmance was fled for the State of
Arkansas et al. by Tim Griffn, Attorney General of Arkansas, and Dylan
L. Jacobs, Interim Solicitor General, and by the Attorneys General for
their respective States as follows: Steve Marshall of Alabama, Treg Taylor
of Alaska, Theodore E. Rokita of Indiana, Brenna Bird of Iowa, Russell
Coleman of Kentucky, Liz Murrill of Louisiana, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi,
Michael T. Hilgers of Nebraska, Dave Yost of Ohio, Gentner Drummond
of Oklahoma, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, Jonathan Skrmetti of Ten-
nessee, and Derek Brown of Utah.

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cedures 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 physi-
cal 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 prose-
cutor's reliance on Article 64 as a reason for denying DNA
testing. Ibid.; see Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 64.01
(Vernon 2018). The same is true here and the Court there-
fore reverses.
I
A
In 1998, Texas charged Ruben Gutierrez with capital mur-
der for the killing of Escolastica Harrison at her mobile home
in Brownsville, Texas. The State's theory at trial was that
Harrison had been stabbed to death with two different
screwdrivers. To support its view that Gutierrez wielded
one of the two screwdrivers in question, the State introduced
a statement Gutierrez gave to the police, in which he ac-
knowledged that he and two accomplices had planned to rob
Harrison on the day she was killed and that he had been in
Harrison's home while one of his accomplices stabbed her.
The jury convicted Gutierrez of capital murder.
Texas law provides that a criminal defendant can be guilty
of capital murder even where he was merely a party to a
crime (such as robbery) that resulted in a person's death.

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Tex. Penal Code Ann. §§ 7.01, 7.02, 19.02, 19.03 (West 2021
and Cum. Supp. 2024). A death sentence, however, may be
imposed only if “the defendant actually caused the death of
the deceased[,] . . . intended to kill the deceased or . . . antici-
pated that a human life would be taken.” Tex. Code Crim.
Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(2)(b)(2) (Vernon 2006); see also John-
son v. State, 853 S. W. 2d 527, 535 (Tex. Crim. App. 1992) (en
banc) (“The Texas capital murder scheme does not allow an
individual to be put to death for merely being a party to a
murder”). To that end, the jury was required at the sen-
tencing phase of Gutierrez's trial to answer whether Texas
proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Gutierrez “actually
caused” Harrison's death or, if not, that he “intended to kill
[her]” or “anticipated that a human life would be taken.”
Art. 37.071(2)(b)(2). The jury answered yes, and Gutierrez
was sentenced to death.
Gutierrez has long maintained that the police coerced him
into confessing that he was in Harrison's home on the night
of the murder. He insists that, as he twice told the police
before the statement in which he purportedly confessed, he
never entered the mobile home that night. Although Gutier-
rez never disputed that he and two accomplices planned to
rob Harrison, he contends that he thought his accomplices
would merely rob Harrison's empty mobile home and that
no one would be harmed during the robbery. He accordingly
asserts that he should never have been sentenced to death, and
intends to seek vacatur of his death sentence in a state habeas
petition. See Art. 11.071(5)(a)(3) (Vernon Cum. Supp. 2024).
Since 2010, Gutierrez has sought DNA testing of crime-
scene evidence, including Harrison's nail scrapings, a loose
hair, and various blood samples, to help him prove it was his
accomplices, not Gutierrez, in Harrison's home on the night
of her murder. He maintains that Texas's Article 64 entitles
him to such DNA testing. Art. 64.01(a)(1). That law pro-
vides for DNA testing where a “convicted person establishes
by a preponderance of the evidence” that he “would not have

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been convicted if exculpatory results had been obtained
through DNA testing ” and that the request was “not made
to unreasonably delay the execution of sentence or adminis-
tration of justice.” Art. 64.03(a)(2). To grant a motion for
DNA testing under Article 64, the state court must also fnd,
among other things, that the evidence “is in a condition mak-
ing DNA testing possible” and that “identity was or is an
issue in the case.” Art. 64.03(a)(1).
Invoking Article 64, Gutierrez twice moved in state court
for an order requiring the local district attorney to turn over
the untested crime scene evidence for DNA testing. The
trial court denied his frst request in 2010, and the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) affrmed. Ex parte Gu-
tierrez, 337 S. W. 3d 883, 886 (2011). The TCCA reasoned
that, even if Gutierrez's DNA was not present on the tested
items, that would not establish his innocence of Texas capital
murder. Id., at 899, 901. After all, even if he was not in
the home, Gutierrez could still be a party to the robbery that
eventually resulted in Harrison's death. Id., at 901. And,
as the TCCA saw it, Gutierrez could not invoke Article 64 to
establish that he had been wrongly sentenced to death unless
he could also establish his innocence of the underlying crime.
Ibid. Finally, the court added: “[E]ven if [Article] 64 did
apply to evidence that might affect the punishment stage as
well as conviction,” Gutierrez “still would not be entitled to
testing ” because “the record facts” show that “he played a
major role in the underlying robbery and that his acts
showed a reckless indifference to human life.” Ibid.
Gutierrez tried again in 2019, this time bolstered by new
counsel and new evidence that, according to Gutierrez, would
implicate Harrison's nephew, Avel Cuellar, as one of the two
people who stabbed Harrison to death. In the interim, Fer-
min Cuellar (Avel Cuellar's nephew), had signed a sworn
statement averring that his uncle Avel approached him in
the summer of 1998 about stealing “ `a lot' ” of money from
Harrison. App. 701a. Fermin also averred that, after the

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murder, Avel boasted to Fermin that he had money buried in
the trailer park. Again, the Texas courts denied Gutierrez's
motion. On appeal, the TCCA reiterated that DNA testing
was not available to show ineligibility for the death penalty
and that, “ `even if [it were],' ” Gutierrez “ `still would not be
entitled to testing.' ” Gutierrez v. State, 2020 WL 918669,
*7–*9 (Feb. 26, 2020) (per curiam).
B
Gutierrez next fled this federal action for declaratory and
injunctive relief under 42 U. S. C. § 1983. He sued respond-
ent Luis Saenz, the district attorney who has custody of the
evidence Gutierrez would like tested and whose offce prose-
cuted Gutierrez. Gutierrez's complaint alleges that, “[b]y
refusing to release the biological evidence for testing, and
thereby preventing [Gutierrez] from gaining access to excul-
patory evidence that could have led to his acquittal [or] dem-
onstrated that he is not death eligible,” the district attorney
“deprived” him “of his liberty interests in utilizing state
[postconviction] procedures . . . in violation of his right to
due process of law.” App. 457a–458a.
Gutierrez's complaint pinpoints at least three features of
Article 64 that prevented him from gaining access to the rel-
evant evidence to which, he says, the Due Process Clause
entitles him. First, Gutierrez says, the Texas courts inter-
pret Article 64 to impose a virtually insurmountable barrier
to obtaining DNA testing, deeming a prisoner ineligible as
long as the record contains any evidence, no matter how
minor, that he committed the crime. Id., at 449a, 451a.
Second, and relatedly, he asserts that it was unfair for the
TCCA not to consider new evidence he had proffered since
his trial: A fair procedure, he contends, would require consid-
ering the effect exculpatory DNA evidence would have on a
jury that also heard “new evidence casting doubt on [Gutier-
rez's] statement” to the police. Id., at 452a, n. 8. Third,
Gutierrez asserts that, as interpreted by the TCCA, Article

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64 violates the Due Process Clause by forbidding DNA test-
ing when its sole purpose is to establish that a defendant is
ineligible for the death penalty. Id., at 456a.
The District Court agreed with Gutierrez in part. 565 F.
Supp. 3d 892 (SD Tex. 2021). It is fundamentally unfair, the
court declared, that Texas gives prisoners the right to fle a
habeas petition challenging their death sentence, but pre-
cludes them from obtaining DNA testing to support that ha-
beas petition unless they can establish innocence of the un-
derlying crime. Id., at 911. That limitation renders the
habeas right “illusory” because few people can make a clear
showing that they were wrongly sentenced to death without
DNA evidence. Id., at 910–911. “Due process,” the court
explained, “does not countenance procedural sleight of hand
whereby a state extends a right with one hand and then
takes it away with another.” Id., at 911.
On appeal, a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit vacated the
District Court's declaratory judgment, reasoning that Gutie-
rrez's claimed injury was not redressable because the declar-
atory judgment would be unlikely to cause the prosecutor to
“reverse course and allow testing.” 93 F. 4th 267, 272
(2024). The court recognized that, just two years ago, this
Court rejected a nearly identical argument in Reed, 598 U. S.
230. See 93 F. 4th, at 273–274, and n. 3. Yet the Fifth Cir-
cuit purported to distinguish Reed because, in Gutierrez's
case, the TCCA “effectively anticipated an unfavorable fed-
eral court ruling ” when it held that, even if Article 64 ap-
plied to claims affecting death eligibility, the facts in the trial
record would still not entitle Gutierrez to DNA testing. 93
F. 4th, at 275. Judge Higginson dissented, noting that he
saw no “meaningful distinction” between this case and Reed.
93 F. 4th, at 275.
While Gutierrez's request for rehearing was pending in the
Fifth Circuit, Texas scheduled his execution. This Court
stayed his execution and granted certiorari to consider Gu-
tierrez's standing to bring his § 1983 claim. 603 U. S. 949

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(2024). Because Reed plainly establishes that he does, the
Court now reverses.
II
A
Individuals convicted of crimes in state court “have a lib-
erty interest in demonstrating [their] innocence with new ev-
idence under state law.” District Attorney's Offce for
Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne, 557 U. S. 52, 68 (2009). For
that reason, a state-created right to postconviction proce-
dures can, “ `in some circumstances, beget yet other rights to
procedures essential to the realization of the parent right.' ”
Ibid.
1
To that end, this Court held in Skinner v. Switzer,
562 U. S. 521 (2011), that a Texas prisoner could fle a due
process claim under § 1983 against a prosecutor who refused
“ `to release . . . biological evidence for testing.' ” Id., at
530. In that case, Skinner had alleged that the prosecutor's
refusal to turn over evidence deprived him of “ `his liberty
interests in utilizing state procedures to obtain reversal of
his conviction and/or to obtain a pardon or reduction of his
sentence.' ” Ibid. This Court reasoned that, while Skinner
could not challenge in federal court the TCCA decisions de-
nying his Article 64 motions, he could allege in a § 1983 ac-
tion that Article 64 unconstitutionally prevented him from
obtaining such testing. Id., at 532.
Skinner did not explicitly address a state prisoner's stand-
ing to bring a due process claim against the custodian of his
1
One of the dissents contends that this Court “ha[d] no business inter-
vening in this case in the frst place” because “Gutierrez's suit rests on the
premise that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause gives him
a `liberty interest' in Texas's voluntarily created procedures.” Post, at
322 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Even if the merits of Gutierrez's due process
claim were relevant to the standing question at issue here (they are not),
Osborne squarely forecloses Justice Thomas's view of that claim. See
557 U. S., at 68; see also, e. g., Wol ff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 558 (1974)
(“[L]iberty,” like property, is protected by the Constitution, “even when
the liberty itself is a statutory creation of the State”).

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evidence. That question was frst raised in Reed, where this
Court confronted another claim that Texas's postconviction
DNA testing law failed to guarantee procedural due process.
598 U. S., at 233. Rodney Reed alleged, among other things,
that Article 64's “stringent chain-of-custody requirement
was unconstitutional and in effect foreclosed DNA testing
for individuals convicted before `rules governing the State's
handling and storage of evidence were put in place.' ” Ibid.
Before this Court, the local prosecutor argued that Reed
lacked Article III standing. Specifcally, the prosecutor as-
serted that a favorable court decision would not redress
Reed's injury. That was because, in the prosecutor's view, a
federal court's “declaration that the statutory provision [he]
attack[s] is unconstitutional” would not “ `likely' ” cause the
district attorney to turn over the physical evidence in his
possession. Brief for Respondents 38–39; Reed, 598 U. S.
230; California v. Texas, 593 U. S. 659, 673 (2021).
This Court disagreed and held that Reed had established
standing to pursue the declaratory judgment action. First,
the Court explained, “Reed suffciently alleged an injury in
fact: denial of access to the requested evidence.” 598 U. S.,
at 234. Second, “[t]he state prosecutor, who is the named
defendant, denied access to the evidence and thereby caused
Reed's injury.” Ibid. Finally, the Court reasoned, “if a
federal court concludes that Texas's post-conviction DNA
testing procedures violate due process, that court order
would eliminate the state prosecutor's justifcation for deny-
ing DNA testing ” and thereby remove the barrier between
Reed and the requested DNA testing. Ibid.
The same is true of Gutierrez's suit. Like Reed and Skin-
ner, Gutierrez alleges that the local prosecutor's denial of his
request for DNA testing deprived him of “his liberty inter-
ests in utilizing state procedures to obtain an acquittal and/
or reduction of his sentence, in violation of his right to due
process of law.” App. 458a. As in Reed, moreover, the de-
claratory judgment Gutierrez seeks would redress that in-

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jury by “ `order[ing] a change in [the] legal status' ” of the
parties and “eliminat[ing]” the state prosecutor's allegedly
unlawful “justifcation for denying DNA testing.” 598 U. S.,
at 234. That is suffcient to resolve this case.
B
1
The Fifth Circuit recognized the clear parallels between
this case and Reed. See 93 F. 4th, at 272, 274, n. 3. Never-
theless, the court thought that, unlike in Reed, the local
prosecutor here was unlikely to allow testing even if a fed-
eral court “declare[d] Texas may not deny DNA testing that
would affect only the punishment stage.” 93 F. 4th, at 272.
Because the TCCA already concluded Gutierrez would not
be entitled to DNA testing even if Article 64 did apply to
evidence affecting only the punishment stage, the Fifth Cir-
cuit reasoned that the district attorney would “quite likely”
rely on that holding to deny testing again. Id., at 274. Re-
spondents, joined by the principal dissent, similarly urge
that Gutierrez lacks standing because the District Court's
reason for declaring part of Article 64 unconstitutional “was
only one of several independent state-law grounds support-
ing District Attorney Saenz's decision to deny access to the
requested evidence.” Brief for Respondents 24; see also
post, at 348–349 (opinion of Alito, J.).
This attempt to distinguish Reed is wrong twice over.
First, both respondents and the Fifth Circuit gloss over the
substance of Gutierrez's complaint, which is the proper focus
of the standing inquiry here. See Davis v. Federal Election
Comm'n, 554 U. S. 724, 734 (2008). Gutierrez's complaint
takes issue not just with Article 64's limitation to actual in-
nocence claims, but with the barrier Article 64 erects be-
tween Gutierrez and DNA testing. At bottom, Gutierrez as-
serts that, to the extent Texas law precludes him from
obtaining the requested evidence, it violates his rights under
the Due Process Clause. App. 457a–458a. That is why his

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complaint alleges, among other things, that Article 64 poses
a “virtually impossible [standard] for anyone convicted under
the law of parties to obtain DNA testing,” id., at 453a, and
why he takes issue with the TCCA's refusal to consider
“newly proffered evidence” in assessing claims like his own,
id., at 452a, n. 8.
2
To the extent the Fifth Circuit based its
assessment of redressability on the declaratory judgment the
District Court later issued, rather than Gutierrez's com-
plaint, it turned the Article III standing inquiry on its head.
Gutierrez's “standing to bring this suit,” 93 F. 4th, at 271,
does not depend on the relief the District Court granted on
the merits.
The principal dissent does not dispute that Gutierrez chal-
lenged, in his complaint, each of the roadblocks Article 64
placed between himself and DNA testing. Post, at 350
(opinion of Alito, J.). Instead, the dissent repeats the Fifth
Circuit's error, urging that Gutierrez can now obtain only
“reinstatement of the District Court's declaratory judg-
ment.” Post, at 347. But rather than assert that the scope
of the declaratory judgment retroactively deprived the Dis-
trict Court of jurisdiction over Gutierrez's complaint, as the
Fifth Circuit erroneously held, the principal dissent suggests
instead that “affrmance of the District Court's declaratory
2
The pr i ncipa l dissent h igh lights the TCCA's r ule “ that only ev i-
dence in the trial record may be considered in determining whether post-
conviction DNA testing is allowed.” Post, at 354 (opinion of Alito, J.).
That construction of Texas law is, of course, what Gutierrez has challenged
under the Due Process Clause. See supra, at 312. In Gutierrez's view,
that new evidence, together with the DNA testing, will help him establish
that he did not in fact “anticipat[e] that a human life would be taken,” Tex.
Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071(2)(b)(2), and that his death sentence
must therefore be vacated. Contra, post, at 354 (Alito, J., dissenting)
(insisting that “a favorable decision on Gutierrez's constitutional argument
would not bolster his challenge to his sentence”). That the principal dis-
sent is skeptical about the merits of Gutierrez's due process challenge is
not pertinent because the Court only granted certiorari to consider Gutier-
rez's Article III standing to bring his suit. See ibid.

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Opinion of the Court
judgment” would not help Gutierrez moving forward. Post,
at 350. That argument, however, does nothing to support
the Fifth Circuit's holding, which the principal dissent de-
fends, that Gutierrez lacked “standing to bring this suit.”
93 F. 4th, at 271.
3
2
Second, and more fundamentally, the Fifth Circuit erred
in transforming the redressability inquiry into a guess as to
whether a favorable court decision will in fact ultimately
cause the prosecutor to turn over the evidence. Id., at 274.
In Reed, just like in this case, the Texas courts had proffered
multiple reasons for denying Reed's Article 64 motion, in-
cluding that “Reed did not demonstrate that he would have
been acquitted if the DNA results were exculpatory,” 598
U. S., at 233, and that Reed “failed to establish that his re-
quest [was] not made to unreasonably delay the execution of
his sentence,” Reed v. State, 541 S. W. 3d 759, 778 (Tex. Crim.
App. 2017). The principal dissent claims that, for Reed,
“striking down the chain-of-custody rule” would have “criti-
cally undermined the TCCA's holding ” as to “[t]wenty-one
additional items,” which “could have been considered” if the
declaratory judgment issued in his favor. Post, at 352. Yet
3
As the principal dissent sees it, the Fifth Circuit held only that Gutier-
rez lacked standing to press one of his arguments in favor of Article 64's
unconstitutionality: that “ `the state violates due process by . . . preventing
testing if resulting evidence would be relevant only to the sentence.' ”
Post, at 348, n. 7 (quoting 93 F. 4th, at 271). Even if that particular argu-
ment about Article 64's unlawfulness could be disentangled from the rest
of Gutierrez's due process claim, see supra, at 312–313, 316, however, the
dissent never embraces the Fifth Circuit's view that Gutierrez lacked
“standing to bring this suit” in the District Court, 93 F. 4th, at 271. In-
stead, it suggests that Gutierrez lacked standing to seek “affrmance of
th[at] claim” from the Fifth Circuit. Post, at 348, n. 7. It was the district
attorney, not Gutierrez, who sought relief from the Fifth Circuit, and there
is no reason to think the Courts of Appeals must dismiss a case for lack
of standing simply because the nonappealing party did not cross-appeal
the scope of the District Court's judgment.

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even absent the chain-of-custody rule, Reed still faced the
TCCA's assessment that his DNA testing request was “un-
timely,” 541 S. W. 3d, at 778, and the trial court's determina-
tion that “exculpatory results from DNA testing of all the
evidence he requested to be tested” would not establish his
innocence, id., at 773. This Court nevertheless reasoned in
Reed that, “if a federal court concludes that Texas's post-
conviction DNA testing procedures violate due process,”
that court order would redress his injury by “eliminat[ing]”
the state prosecutor's reliance on Article 64 as a reason for
denying DNA testing. 598 U. S., at 234. The particular de-
claratory judgment Reed requested was thus no more likely
to yield a change in the district attorney's conduct than the
one Gutierrez sought here. Contra, post, at 347, 351–354
(opinion of Alito, J.).
What was true in Reed thus applies here, too. There is
little doubt that Saenz considers Article 64 in his assessment
of whether to provide requested DNA evidence. Indeed,
Saenz confrmed at oral argument that he would likely “turn
over the evidence” if he thought Article 64 entitled Gutierrez
to DNA testing. Tr. of Oral Arg. 71. A declaratory judg-
ment in Gutierrez's favor would accordingly redress his in-
jury by removing the allegedly unconstitutional barrier Arti-
cle 64 erected between Gutierrez and the requested testing.
To be sure, Saenz nevertheless states that any declaratory
judgment will not affect his ultimate willingness to turn over
the evidence. He and the principal dissent urge that the
Court need not even “speculate” about what he might do
because, “[a]fter securing a declaratory judgment from the
district court,” Gutierrez again sought DNA testing and
“Saenz refused.” Brief for Respondents 27; see post, at 350
(opinion of Alito, J.). This, again, is a familiar refrain. The
prosecutor in Reed, too, maintained that a declaratory judg-
ment would not “ `bring about' ” “ `any change in [his] con-
duct.' ” Brief for Respondents 38–39; Reed, 598 U. S., at 249
(Thomas, J., dissenting). This Court was unmoved by that

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Opinion of the Court
assertion. See id., at 234. The reason is simple: That a
prosecutor might eventually fnd another reason, grounded
in Article 64 or elsewhere, to deny a prisoner's request for
DNA testing does not vitiate his standing to argue that the
cited reasons violated his rights under the Due Process
Clause. See, e. g., Federal Election Comm'n v. Akins, 524
U. S. 11, 25 (1998) (“[T]hose adversely affected by a discre-
tionary agency decision generally have standing to complain
that the agency based its decision upon an improper legal
ground . . . even though the agency . . . might later, in the
exercise of its lawful discretion, reach the same result for a
different reason”); Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S.
555, 572, n. 7 (1992) (“[U]nder our case law, one living adja-
cent to the site for proposed construction of a federally li-
censed dam has standing to challenge the licensing agency's
failure to prepare an environmental impact statement, even
though he cannot establish with any certainty that the state-
ment will cause the license to be withheld or altered . . . ”).
C
Finally, Saenz asserts in the alternative that this case is
now moot because Saenz refused Gutierrez's request for
DNA testing even after the District Court issued the declar-
atory judgment. Brief for Respondents 42–44. That claim
fails, too. As Saenz himself recognizes, “a case `becomes
moot only when it is impossible for a court to grant any effec-
tual relief whatever to the prevailing party.' ” Chafn v.
Chafn, 568 U. S. 165, 172 (2013) (quoting Knox v. Service
Employees, 567 U. S. 298, 307 (2012)). It is not enough that
“the practical impact of any decision is not assured.” 568
U. S., at 175.
In any event, a procedural due process claim like the one
Gutierrez presses is not mooted by the defendant's mid-
appeal promise that, no matter the result of a lawsuit, the
ultimate outcome will not change. Holding otherwise would

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Opinion of Barrett, J.
allow all manner of defendants to manufacture mootness by
ensuring that, no matter what procedures a court requires
the defendant to employ, the same substantive outcome will
result. In that world, the person “living adjacent to the site
for proposed construction of a federally licensed dam” would
lose her claim “to challenge the licensing agency's failure to
prepare an environmental impact statement” as long as the
agency promised that the statement would not cause the li-
cense to be withheld or altered. Lujan, 504 U. S., at 572,
n. 7. Article III mandates no such result.
***
In the end, Reed is indisting uishable. Gutierrez has
standing to challenge Texas's DNA testing procedures under
the Due Process Clause. The judgment of the U. S. Court
of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit is therefore reversed, and
the case is remanded for further proceedings consistent with
this opinion.
It is so ordered.
Justice Barrett, concurring in part and concurring in
the judgment.
When the Fifth Circuit attempted to distinguish this case
from Reed v. Goertz, 598 U. S. 230 (2023), it failed to consider
the breadth of the relief that Gutierrez requested in his com-
plaint. See ante, at 316. I would reverse on that basis
alone. The Court goes further, borrowing from our some-
what relaxed redressability inquiry in administrative-law
procedural injury cases. See ante, at 318–320 (citing Fed-
eral Election Comm'n v. Akins, 524 U. S. 11, 25 (1998);
Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 572, n. 7
(1992)). By invoking Akins and Lujan in the unique context
of requests for DNA evidence from Texas prosecutors, the
Court muddies the waters of standing doctrine. I respect-
fully join all but Part II–B–2 of the Court's opinion.

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Justice Thomas, dissenting.
I join Justice Alito's principal dissent because I agree
that Ruben Gutierrez lacks standing to bring a federal suit
alleging that Texas's post-conviction DNA testing proce-
dures violate due process.
1
I write separately to emphasize
that this Court has no business intervening in this case in
the frst place. The Constitution does not require any State
to establish procedures for state prisoners to challenge the
validity of their convictions after trial. Yet, Gutierrez's suit
rests on the premise that the Fourteenth Amendment's Due
Process Clause gives him a “liberty interest” in Texas's
voluntarily created procedures. That premise cannot be
squared with any principled reading of the Due Process
Clause. I therefore disagree with our decision to grant cer-
tiorari and revive Gutierrez's challenge. Our intervention
serves no purpose other than to exacerbate the already egre-
gious delays endemic to capital litigation.
I
A
The Texas Constitution provides capital defendants the
right to a trial by jury. Art. 1, § 10. It further provides
that, after a defendant is convicted and sentenced, he may
1
I agree that the Court “fagrantly distorts the standard” that this
Court articulated in Reed v. Goertz, 598 U. S. 230 (2023), by deeming irrele-
vant the independent grounds that the Texas courts have given for deny-
ing DNA testing to Gutierrez. Post, at 346–348 (Alito, J., dissenting).
I also continue to believe that Reed made “chaos” of our standing doctrine.
598 U. S., at 255 (Thomas, J., dissenting). Even if the Texas courts had
not articulated alternative grounds for denying Gutierrez testing, “an ab-
stract declaration” that Texas's limits on DNA testing are unconstitutional
cannot redress any injury because it does not compel any “change in con-
duct” on the part of the district attorney. Id., at 249. Gutierrez's real
dispute is with the Texas courts for denying his motions for testing, but
the Rooker-Feldman doctrine prohibits parties from attacking state-court
judgments in federal district court. See Reed, 598 U. S., at 244–252
(Thomas, J., dissenting); Rooker v. Fidelity Trust Co., 263 U. S. 413 (1923);
District of Columbia Court of Appeals v. Feldman, 460 U. S. 462 (1983).

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Thomas, J., dissenting
fle a direct appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals
(TCCA), the State's highest court for criminal cases. Art.
5, § 5(b). Texas law also allows prisoners sentenced to death
to challenge their conviction and sentence collaterally by fl-
ing a petition for habeas corpus in their court of conviction.
Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 11.071 (Vernon Cum. Supp.
2024). Even if the prisoner's trial was error free, he may
obtain habeas relief under state law if he produces newly
discovered evidence establishing that he is actually innocent
of the offense. Ex parte Mayhugh, 512 S. W. 3d 285, 295
(Tex. Crim. App. 2016).
Chapter 64 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure fur-
ther allows convicted defendants to seek testing of DNA evi-
dence that was in the possession of the State during trial.
Arts. 64.01(a)(2)(a–1), (b) (Vernon 2018). Upon the defend-
ant's motion, the convicting court may order testing if cer-
tain conditions are met, including that the evidence still
exists in a testable condition, that the defendant can show
that he likely would not have been convicted had he obtained
exculpatory results from DNA testing, and that the defend-
ant can show that he is not bringing the motion unreasonably
to delay his execution. Art. 64.03(a). Defendants who ob-
tain DNA testing may use the results to support their state
habeas petitions. Thacker v. State, 177 S. W. 3d 926, 927
(Tex. Crim. App. 2005) (per curiam).
B
A Texas jury convicted Gutierrez and sentenced him to
death for the 1998 robbery and murder of Escolastica Har-
rison. Having thrice failed to obtain DNA testing under
Chapter 64 in state court, he now claims that several of
Chapter 64's restrictions on obtaining DNA testing violate
the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. See
ante, at 311–313.
To make sense of Gutierrez's claim, we must frst under-
stand what rights the Due Process Clause protects. The
Clause provides that no State shall “deprive any person of

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Thomas, J., dissenting
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” Amdt.
14, § 1. In other words, the State cannot decide to take
away an individual's life, liberty, or property unless it ad-
heres to certain procedures. But, the Due Process Clause
does not protect all rights—only life, liberty, and property.
Thus, the frst step in any due process analysis is to deter-
mine whether the right that the individual asserts falls
within one of these three categories. See Board of Regents
of State Colleges v. Roth, 408 U. S. 564, 570–571 (1972). If
it does not, the “requirements” of due process do not
“apply.” Ibid.
By seeking to execute Gutierrez and to imprison him until
his execution, Texas undoubtedly seeks to deprive Gutierrez
of his life and liberty. Yet, Gutierrez rightly does not base
his due process claim on either of these deprivations, because
he has received far more than the process required to justify
them. Under our precedents, Texas must conduct a trial
before it can imprison or execute a person as punishment for
a crime. See Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 398–399
(1993). But, the “State is not required by the Federal Con-
stitution to provide . . . a right to appellate review.” Griffn
v. Illinois, 351 U. S. 12, 18 (1956) (plurality opinion); accord,
id., at 21 (Frankfurter, J., concurring in judgment); McKane
v. Durston, 153 U. S. 684, 687 (1894). Nor need it provide
“[p]ostconviction relief,” which “is even further removed
from the criminal trial.” Pennsylvania v. Finley, 481 U. S.
551, 556–557 (1987). Texas thus gave Gutierrez at his 1999
trial all the process necessary to imprison and execute him.
The ensuing quarter century of direct and collateral review
has been additional process above the constitutional foor.
Gutierrez instead asserts that he has a distinct “ `liberty
interest' ” in Texas's “state-created right to postconviction”
relief. Ante, at 314. In Gutierrez's view, part of the “lib-
erty” that Texas prisoners enjoy under the Fourteenth
Amendment is a right to obtain release pursuant to Texas's
habeas statute, which the State takes away every time its

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Thomas, J., dissenting
courts deny habeas relief. Thus, Gutierrez contends, if
Texas law does not afford prisoners suffcient procedural
rights to bolster their habeas petitions—such as, in his case,
access to DNA testing—the State has deprived them of lib-
erty without the due process of law.
2
Gutierrez bases his asserted interest on this Court's deci-
sion in District Attorney's Offce for Third Judicial Dist. v.
Osborne, 557 U. S. 52 (2009). There, the Court concluded
that a prisoner has a “postconviction liberty interest” under
the Due Process Clause if state law grants him “an entitle-
ment . . . to prove his innocence even after a fair trial has
proved otherwise.” Id., at 67–68.
II
The Fourteenth Amendment does not protect Gutierrez's
asserted “liberty interest.” As originally understood, “lib-
erty” in the Fourteenth Amendment likely referred only to
freedom from physical restraint. It did not include entitle-
2
Gutierrez also claims that executive clemency is a “liberty interest”
that he cannot be denied without access to DNA testing. But, “noncapital
defendants do not have a liberty interest in traditional state executive
clemency.” District Attorney's Offce for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne,
557 U. S. 52, 67 (2009); see Connecticut Bd. of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452
U. S. 458, 464 (1981). In Ohio Adult Parole Authority v. Woodard, 523
U. S. 272 (1998), Chief Justice Rehnquist concluded for a plurality of the
Court that the same is true of capital defendants, because trial and sen-
tencing extinguish the defendant's “interest in not being executed in ac-
cord with his sentence.” Id., at 281. When applying for clemency, the
“defendant in effect accepts the fnality of the death sentence for purposes
of adjudication, and appeals for clemency as a matter of grace.” Id., at
282. Justice O'Connor, in contrast, left open the possibility that “some
minimal procedural safeguards apply to clemency proceedings,” such that
a due process violation “might” occur if “a state offcial fipped a coin to
determine whether to grant clemency.” Id., at 289 (opinion concurring in
part and concurring in judgment). But, even if Justice O'Connor's view
is correct, Gutierrez plainly cannot rely on it to establish a due process
violation. DNA testing is not necessary to make the Texas clemency
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Thomas, J., dissenting
ments to government-created benefts. This Court's con-
trary precedent stems from a conscious, policy-based rejec-
tion of the Due Process Clause's original meaning.
A
The original meaning of “liberty” in the Fourteenth
Amendment was likely far narrower than our precedents
currently hold. The term originally appears to have re-
ferred only to freedom from physical restraint. But, in the
Lochner era, the Court began to hold that “liberty” includes
fundamental rights generally. See Lochner v. New York,
198 U. S. 45 (1905). This Court has since adhered to that
broader meaning.
As with any legal text, we must construe the Fourteenth
Amendment according to the ordinary meaning of its terms
at the time of its enactment. Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1,
188–189 (1824); T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 55
(1868). We may not defer to “demonstrably erroneous”
precedents that are inconsistent with the Amendment's orig-
inal meaning. Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. 678, 717–
718 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring).
When the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted in 1868,
its Due Process Clause was understood to embody an “old
. . . principle” dating back to Magna Carta, the great 13th-
century charter of English liberties. Munn v. Illinois, 94
U. S. 113, 123–124 (1877). Magna Carta provided that a
“free man” may not be “prosecute[d],” “imprisoned,” or “de-
stroyed” except “by the law of the land.” Magna Carta, ch.
39 (1215), in A. Howard, Magna Carta: Text and Commen-
tary 43 (1964). A century later, a statute interpreting this
“law of the land” provision stated that “no Man” shall be
“imprisoned” or “put to Death, without being brought in An-
swer by due Process of the Law.” 28 Edw. III, c. 3 (1354);
see also 1 E. Coke, The Second Part of the Institutes of
the Laws of England 50 (1642) (interpreting “by the Law of
the Land” to be equivalent to “by due Process of the Com-
mon law”).

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Blackstone referred to Magna Carta's “law of the land”
provision as protecting the three “absolute rights of every
Englishman”: the “right of personal security,” including
“life”; “the right of personal liberty”; and “the right of
private property.” 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on
the Laws of England 123, 125 (1765) (Blackstone). This for-
mulation “heavily” infuenced the founding generation of
America. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. 644, 724 (2015)
(Thomas, J., dissenting). Many early state constitutions
contained provisions “that replicated Magna Carta's lan-
guage, but were modifed to refer specifcally to `life, liberty,
or property.' ” Ibid., and n. 3 (collecting examples). And,
the Fifth Amendment similarly prohibited the Federal Gov-
ernment from depriving any person “of life, liberty, or prop-
erty, without due process of law.”
“Liberty” in the Fifth Amendment likely refers only to
freedom from physical restraint. Blackstone defned “the
right of personal liberty” as “the power of loco-motion, of
changing situation, or removing one's person to whatsoever
place one's own inclination may direct; without imprisonment
or restraint, unless by due course of law.” 1 Blackstone 130.
Following Blackstone, “[s]tate decisions interpreting [state
due process] provisions between the founding and the ratif-
cation of the Fourteenth Amendment almost uniformly con-
strued the word `liberty' to refer only to freedom from physi-
cal restraint.” Obergefell, 576 U. S., at 724–725 (Thomas, J.,
dissenting) (citing C. Warren, The New “Liberty” Under the
Fourteenth Amendment, 39 Harv. L. Rev. 431, 441–445 (1926)
(Warren)). In light of this history, “it is hard to see how
the `liberty' protected by the [Fifth Amendment] could be
interpreted to include anything broader.” 576 U. S., at 725
(Thomas, J., dissenting).
“If the Fifth Amendment uses `liberty' in this narrow
sense, then the Fourteenth Amendment likely does as well.”
Ibid. When the language of a provision “is obviously trans-
planted from another legal source, it brings the old soil with
it.” Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U. S. 554, 560 (2019) (internal

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328 GUTIERREZ v. SAENZ
Thomas, J., dissenting
quotation marks omitted). Applying that well-established
principle, this Court has long recognized the Fourteenth
Amendment's due process protections as having “the same
sense” as the Fifth Amendment's. Hurtado v. California,
110 U. S. 516, 534–535 (1884); accord, Slaughter-House Cases,
16 Wall. 36, 80–81 (1873); Hibben v. Smith, 191 U. S. 310, 325
(1903); Malinski v. New York, 324 U. S. 401, 415 (1945) (opin-
ion of Frankfurter, J.).
3
It was not until the Lochner era that this Court adopted
a broader understanding of “liberty.” During that period,
stretching from 1897 to 1937, this Court relied on the “legal
fction” of “substantive” due process to invalidate disfavored
social and economic legislation by States. McDonald v. Chi-
cago, 561 U. S. 742, 811 (2010) (Thomas, J., concurring in part
and concurring in judgment). Under that fction, the Due
Process Clauses forbade all government infringement on
“certain `fundamental' liberty interests . . . , no matter what
process is provided.” Reno v. Flores, 507 U. S. 292, 302
(1993). To make the fction work, the Court reinterpreted
the Clauses' guarantee of “ `process' ” to encompass “sub-
stance,” a notion that “strains credulity for even the most
casual user of words.” McDonald, 561 U. S., at 811 (opinion
of Thomas, J.).
3
Some decisions of this Court, while recognizing the general principle
that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments' Due Process Clauses should
be read together, have left open the possibility “that questions may arise
in which different constructions and applications of [the Clauses] may be
proper.” French v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co., 181 U. S. 324, 328 (1901).
Even assuming that caveat is correct, however, reading “liberty” in the
Fourteenth Amendment to mean fundamental rights generally, see in fra
this page and 329, would appear to render the Fourteenth Amendment so
broad that it would destroy the general rule that the Fifth and Fourteenth
Amendments should be read coextensively. And, even if “liberty” in the
Fourteenth Amendment were entirely decoupled from its meaning in the
Fifth Amendment, I am aware of nothing showing that the term was un-
derstood to encompass government entitlements before the 1970s. See
in fra, at 331–334.

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Thomas, J., dissenting
The Court's embrace of substantive due process also re-
quired it to jettison the concept of “liberty” as only freedom
from restraint, so that it could encompass other rights that
the Court deemed “fundamental.” In Allgeyer v. Louisi-
ana, 165 U. S. 578 (1897), this Court's frst substantive due
process decision under the Fourteenth Amendment, the
Court for the frst time broadened the defnition of “liberty”
to include the freedom of contract. Id., at 589; see Warren
445–449 (tracing the interpretation of “liberty” from the
Fourteenth Amendment's ratifcation to Allgeyer). By the
height of the Lochner era, the Court had stretched the term
to cover “those privileges long recognized at common law as
essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”
Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U. S. 390, 399 (1923). These privi-
leges included “the right of the individual to contract, to en-
gage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire
useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up
children,” and “to worship God according to the dictates of
his own conscience.” Ibid.
This Court eventually repudiated Lochner's muscular ver-
sion of substantive due process—at least for economic rights.
See Ferguson v. Skrupa, 372 U. S. 726, 730 (1963); West Coast
Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937). But, the Court
continues to treat Meyer's defnition of “liberty” as authori-
tative. E. g., Roth, 408 U. S., at 572.
B
Gutierrez's claim of a state-created “liberty interest” in ob-
taining post-conviction relief is inconsistent with the original
understanding of “liberty.” From the founding through the
Lochner era, “liberty” was understood to be a natural, pre-
political right. Such an understanding is fundamentally in-
compatible with a “right” bestowed by the government.
Blackstone squarely framed life, liberty, and property as
natural rights that existed before government. In an ac-
count “heavily infuenced” by the political theories of John

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Locke, Obergefell, 576 U. S., at 726–727, n. 4 (Thomas, J.,
dissenting), Blackstone explained that, in the state of nature,
every man has the “power of acting as [he] thinks ft, without
any restraint or control.” 1 Blackstone 121. When man
“enters into society, [he] gives up a part of his natural lib-
erty” to enjoy the rest of it in security. Ibid. Thus, the
liberty that each man enjoys as “a member of society, is no
other than natural liberty so far restrained by human laws
. . . as is necessary and expedient for the general advantage
of the publick.” Ibid. This includes “the absolute rights”
of life, liberty, and property, which exist in the “state of na-
ture, and which every man is intitled to enjoy whether out
of society or in it.” Id., at 119 (emphasis deleted). In other
words, according to Blackstone, life, liberty, and property are
rights that predate government and that were not surren-
dered when government was established; they are not enti-
tlements that the government can bestow by positive law.
Founding-era Americans shared this understanding of lib-
erty. The Lockean “idea of civil liberty as natural liberty
constrained by human law” “permeated the 18th-century po-
litical scene in America.” Obergefell, 576 U. S., at 726–728
(Thomas, J., dissenting). For instance, the Virginia Decla-
ration of Rights of 1776—“the frst of the colonial bills of
rights,” Klopfer v. North Carolina, 386 U. S. 213, 225
(1967)—proclaimed that “all men . . . by nature” possess the
“inherent rights” of “life,” “liberty,” and “property,” which
they retain “when they enter into a state of society.” § I, in
1 Milestone Documents in American History 154 (P. Finkel-
man ed. 2008) (Finkelman). Similarly, the Declaration of In-
dependence asserts that the “unalienable Rights” of “Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” come from the “Cre-
ator,” and that, “to secure these rights, Governments are
instituted among Men.” ¶2.
The understanding of liberty as a natural right persisted
until well after the enactment of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment. Even as this Court expanded the notion of “liberty”

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Thomas, J., dissenting
in the Lochner era, it remained faithful to the idea of liberty
as “individual freedom from governmental action, not as a
right to a particular governmental entitlement.” Oberge-
fell, 576 U. S., at 726 (Thomas, J., dissenting). None of the
liberties enumerated in Meyer, for instance, could be charac-
terized as state-created benefts. See 262 U. S., at 399. To
the contrary, when interpreting the Due Process Clauses, the
Court distinguished between rights inherent to the individ-
ual and privileges established by the government. The
Court recognized, for example, that a prisoner's statutory
entitlement to early release on parole was a “privilege” that
“comes as an act of grace to one convicted of a crime,” not
a right protected by the Due Process Clauses. Escoe v.
Zerbst, 295 U. S. 490, 492–493 (1935).
In short, entitlements established by the government can-
not be “liberty” under the Due Process Clause of the Four-
teenth Amendment. Gutierrez thus has no “liberty inter-
est” in Texas's state-created right to post-conviction relief.
C
Gutierrez rests the legitimacy of his due process claim on
Osborne, which concluded that a prisoner has a “ `liberty in-
terest' ” when state law gives him “an entitlement . . . to
prove his innocence even after a fair trial has proved other-
wise.” 557 U. S., at 67. But, Osborne did not base this con-
clusion on the original meaning of “liberty” in the Four-
teenth Amendment. It instead relied on a line of cases
ultimately tracing back to Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U. S. 254
(1970), where this Court relied on policy considerations to
redefne “property” to include government entitlements.
Scholars generally agree that the term “property” in the
Due Process Clauses originally referred only to those inter-
ests traditionally recognized as property at common law.
See, e. g., 1 K. Hickman & R. Pierce, Administrative Law
§ 7.4, pp. 903–904 (7th ed. 2024); G. Lawson, Federal Adminis-
trative Law 350 (1998); L. Tribe, American Constitutional

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332 GUTIERREZ v. SAENZ
Thomas, J., dissenting
Law § 10–8, pp. 680–681 (2d ed. 1988). Property at common
law did not include entitlements to government benefts.
See 2 Blackstone 16–19, 384–399; J. Kent, Commentaries on
American Law 324–330, 613–614 (W. Browne ed. 1894)
(Kent). And, consistent with their general view of civil lib-
erties, Americans at the founding and in the early Republic
viewed property—like liberty—as a natural, pre-political
right. See, e. g., Virginia Declaration of Rights, § I, in
Finkelman 154; Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386, 388–389 (1798)
(opinion of Chase, J.); H. Baldwin, A General View of the
Origin and Nature of the Constitution and Government of
the United States 136 (1837); Kent 203.
The understanding of property as a natural right per-
sisted through the ratifcation of the Fourteenth Amend-
ment. After the Civil War, this Court held that a statute-of-
limitations defense was not “property” within the meaning
of the Constitution because it “is the creation of conventional
law,” not a “natural right.” Campbell v. Holt, 115 U. S. 620,
629 (1885). And, state-court decisions in the years leading
up to and immediately following the Amendment's ratifca-
tion continued to recognize property as a natural right.
See, e. g., People v. Quant, 12 How. Pr. 83, 89 (NY Sup. Ct.
1855); Sherman v. Buick, 32 Cal. 241, 249 (1867); Munn v.
People, 69 Ill. 80, 96 (1873), aff'd, 94 U. S. 113 (1877).
Consistent with this view, “it has traditionally been held”
that the Due Process Clauses do not apply where it is “possi-
ble to characterize [the asserted] private interest . . . as a
mere privilege subject to the [government's] plenary power.”
Cafeteria & Restaurant Workers v. McElroy, 367 U. S. 886,
895 (1961). Thus, from the antebellum period to the 1960s,
this Court consistently recognized that government employ-
ment, veterans' benefts, admission to the country as an
alien, and other government-created entitlements are not
property or otherwise cognizable interests under the Due
Process Clauses. See, e. g., United States ex rel. Knauff v.
Shaughnessy, 338 U. S. 537, 542 (1950); Oceanic Steam Nav.

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Co. v. Stranahan, 214 U. S. 320, 340–343 (1909); Buttfeld v.
Stranahan, 192 U. S. 470, 497 (1904); Taylor v. Beckham, 178
U. S. 548, 576 (1900); Crenshaw v. United States, 134 U. S.
99, 104 (1890); United States v. Teller, 107 U. S. 64, 68 (1883);
Butler v. Pennsylvania, 10 How. 402, 416 (1851); Kendall v.
United States ex rel. Stokes, 12 Pet. 524, 592–593 (1838).
In the 1960s, Professor Charles Reich of the Yale Law
School published two articles proposing a radical reinterpre-
tation of the concept of property. See Individual Rights and
Social Welfare: The Emerging Legal Issues, 74 Yale L. J.
1245 (1965) (Individual Rights); The New Property, 73 Yale
L. J. 733 (1964) (The New Property). Taking direct aim at
the Framers' understanding, Reich argued that “[p]roperty
is not a natural right but a deliberate construction by soci-
ety” that could be redefned to meet contemporary social
needs. Id., at 771. In his view, the rise of “the welfare
state” and the dependence it fostered meant that “each man
cannot be wholly the master of his own destiny.” Id., at 786.
Thus, he concluded, to protect the now-dependent citizenry
from arbitrary government power, the legal system must
“mak[e government] benefts into rights” akin to traditional
property rights. Ibid. In other words, “[w]e must create a
new property.” Id., at 787.
This Court embraced Reich's vision in 1970, holding that
“welfare benefits” are proper ty under the Four teenth
Amendment's Due Process Clause because they “are a mat-
ter of statutory entitlement for persons qualifed to receive
them.” Goldberg, 397 U. S., at 261–262. The Court dis-
missed any distinction between “a `privilege' and . . . a
`right,' ” and did not attempt to ground its conclusion in the
text or history of the Due Process Clause. Id., at 262 (some
internal quotation marks omitted). The Court instead gave
a sociological justifcation, “simply highlight[ing] the social
importance of `entitlements,' which had come to make up
`[m]uch of the existing wealth in this country,' and which only
the poor had been theretofore unable to effectively enforce.”

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Thomas, J., dissenting
Williams v. Reed, 604 U. S. 168, 182, n. (2025) (Thomas, J.,
dissenting); see Goldberg, 397 U. S., at 262, and n. 8 (citing
Individual Rights 1255; The New Property).
Soon after Goldberg's radical redefnition of “property” to
include government-created entitlements, this Court rede-
fned “liberty” along similar lines. The Court held that, in
at least some circumstances, the denial of parole triggered
the Due Process Clause because “a person's liberty is equally
protected, even when the liberty itself is a statutory creation
of the State.” Wolff v. McDonnell, 418 U. S. 539, 558 (1974);
accord, Meachum v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 226 (1976). To jus-
tify this shift, the Court relied on “the accepted due process
analysis as to property.” Wolff, 418 U. S., at 557–558; ac-
cord, Meachum, 427 U. S., at 226 (citing Goldberg, 397 U. S.
254); see also Evitts v. Lucey, 469 U. S. 387, 400–401 (1985)
(citing Goldberg, 397 U. S., at 262).
As with property, the Court's redefnition of “liberty” was
a conscious break with the past. The Court rejected the
inquiry of “whether [a] parolee's liberty is a `right' or a `privi-
lege' ” as “hardly useful any longer.” Morrissey v. Brewer,
408 U. S. 471, 482 (1972) (emphasis added). It expressly re-
pudiated its earlier case law holding that probation, as “an
`act of grace,' ” triggers no due process protections. See
Gagnon v. Scarpelli, 411 U. S. 778, 782, n. 4 (1973) (quoting
Escoe, 295 U. S., at 492). And, seemingly to obfuscate the
awkwardness of referring to a government-created entitle-
ment as “liberty,” the Court began to speak instead of “lib-
erty interests.” Kenosha v. Bruno, 412 U. S. 507, 515 (1973)
(internal quotation marks omitted). Although it is now
standard terminology in due process litigation, the phrase
did not appear in the United States Reports before Goldberg.
Osborne relied on this line of cases to recognize a “liberty
interest” in post-conviction procedures. Invoking the lan-
guage of Goldberg, the Court asserted that a prisoner has a
“liberty interest” in a State's post-conviction procedures if
those procedures confer “an entitlement . . . to prove his

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Thomas, J., dissenting
innocence” after trial. 557 U. S., at 67 (emphasis added).
And, to establish that an entitlement of this kind can give
rise to a viable due process claim, the Court cited Connecti-
cut Bd. of Pardons v. Dumschat, 452 U. S. 458, 463 (1981),
and Wolff, 418 U. S., at 556–558, both of which relied on this
Court's post-Goldberg redefnition of “property.”
4
See 557
U. S., at 68.
Osborne thus cannot support Gutierrez's asserted “liberty
interest.” We may, consistent with the judicial power, defer
to earlier decisions that “apply traditional tools of construc-
tion and arrive at different,” but reasonable, “interpretations
of legal texts.” Gamble, 587 U. S., at 721 (Thomas, J., con-
curring). But, Osborne rests on nothing more than Gold-
berg's abandonment of the Due Process Clause's original
meaning.
III
We should correct the error we made in Osborne, which
seriously undermines States' interests in fnality and in pro-
viding relief to compelling claims of actual innocence. At
the very least, we should cease fnding novel ways to revive
due process challenges to post-conviction DNA testing pro-
cedures, as the Court does today.
In enacting Chapter 64, Texas has voluntarily chosen to
prioritize claims of actual innocence at a signifcant cost to
its interest in fnality. Thanks in no small part to decisions
of this Court, capital cases today are routinely plagued by
decades-long delays between sentencing and execution, with
much of the litigation concerning convoluted procedural is-
sues having little or nothing to do with the guilt or innocence
of the defendant. See Baze v. Rees, 553 U. S. 35, 69–70
4
Wol ff invoked “the accepted due process analysis as to property” to
hold that a “statutory right to good time” credits constituted a liberty
interest. 418 U. S., at 557–558. Dumschat relied on Wol ff and Meachum
v. Fano, 427 U. S. 215, 226 (1976), to establish that a “ `state-created right' ”
can be a cognizable liberty interest. 452 U. S., at 463. Meachum cited
Goldberg for that point. 427 U. S., at 226.

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336 GUTIERREZ v. SAENZ
Thomas, J., dissenting
(2008) (Alito, J., concurring); id., at 92 (Scalia, J., concurring
in judgment). This delay undermines the “important inter-
est” that both “the State and the victims of crime have . . .
in the timely enforcement of a sentence.” Hill v. McDon-
ough, 547 U. S. 573, 584 (2006). In spite of these interests,
Texas has willingly decided to make freestanding actual-
innocence claims cognizable on post-conviction review and to
create a process for obtaining DNA testing to support such
claims. In this respect, Texas is more generous to capital
defendants than the Federal Government, which offers
no statutory mechanism for raising a freestanding actual-
innocence claim. See Herrera, 506 U. S., at 400.
By recognizing a “liberty interest” in Texas's post-
conviction procedures, however, this Court has converted
those procedures from a means of vindicating compelling
claims of actual innocence into a tool for obstruction. In ad-
dition to trial, direct appeal, and multiple rounds of collateral
review in state and federal court, Texas must now prevail
in yet another arena—§ 1983 litigation challenging its DNA
testing procedures—before it can carry out its lawfully im-
posed sentences. See Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983.
And, given the novelty of this litigation, such suits give rise
to a host of diffcult threshold justiciability questions that
must be resolved before a federal court can reach the merits
of the due process challenge, much less before a state court
can resolve the prisoner's claim of actual innocence.
We need look no further than this case. Twenty-six years
after the brutal murder of Escolastica Harrison, this Court
stayed Gutierrez's impending execution. 603 U. S. 937
(2024). Why? Not because Gutierrez had made a compel-
ling allegation of innocence. Rather, the Court stayed the
execution to decide whether Gutierrez has standing to raise a
due process challenge to Texas's post-conviction procedures.
There is every reason to think that the ultimate claim of
actual innocence on which Gutierrez's case rests is baseless.
The key premise that Gutierrez hopes that DNA testing will

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Thomas, J., dissenting
establish—that he was not inside Harrison's home when she
was stabbed to death with a pair of screwdrivers—is contra-
dicted by his own confession, to say nothing of the unani-
mous statements of his accomplices. See post, at 339–340
(Alito, J., dissenting). The TCCA has held three times that
Gutierrez would likely still have been convicted of capital
murder as an accomplice even if he could prove that he had
not personally been inside Harrison's home. See post, at
343–344. And, in Gutierrez's most recent motion for DNA
testing, the trial court explicitly found that Gutierrez had
made the motion “for the purpose of unreasonably delaying
the execution of [his] sentence.” App. 655a. In short,
Texas could reasonably determine that the need for fnality
outweighed the upsides of giving Gutierrez additional proc-
ess. Yet, because this Court has found a “liberty interest”
where none exists, that judgment must be thwarted until
this additional multiyear front of litigation reaches its conclu-
sion. If this is what States can expect when they create
new post-conviction avenues for raising actual-innocence
claims, they may well conclude that doing so is not worth
the cost.
5
***
Gutierrez's suit rests on a non-existent “liberty interest.”
The Due Process Clause protects an individual's natural lib-
erty from government interference. It does not guarantee
entitlements to government benefts, like Texas's voluntarily
adopted post-conviction procedures. By intervening to re-
vive this suit, the Court facilitates precisely the “unjustifed
5
Our two earlier cases addressing due process challenges to Texas's
DNA testing procedures followed a similar pattern. In both cases, the
Court intervened long after sentencing to address threshold procedural
issues in the petitioners' federal due process suits. See Reed, 598 U. S.,
at 232–233 (addressing the timeliness of petitioner's due process suit 25
years after sentencing); Skinner v. Switzer, 562 U. S. 521, 525 (2011) (ad-
dressing the availability of § 1983 as a cause of action 16 years after
sentencing).

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Alito, J., dissenting
delay” that it is supposed to prevent in capital cases. Buck-
lew v. Precythe, 587 U. S. 119, 150 (2019). That is a misuse
of our discretionary certiorari jurisdiction. I respectfully
dissent.
Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas and Justice
Gorsuch join, dissenting.
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 309, 315, 317. Second, it then has the audacity
to criticize the Fifth Circuit for applying the real Reed test.
See ante, at 316. Third, it ignores critical differences be-
tween the situation in Reed and the situation here. See ante,
at 316–318. Fourth, it paints a misleading picture of underly-
ing facts and Gutierrez's decades-long litigation campaign.
See ante, at 309–314. Fifth, it fails to recognize the limited
scope of the declaratory judgment at issue. See ante, at 316.
And sixth, it ignores lawful and binding Texas law regarding
the facts that may be considered when a prisoner seeks DNA
testing. See ante, at 317.
I
A
1
Because the majority paints a misleading picture of the
facts and prior proceedings in this case, I begin by setting
the record straight. In 1999, Gutierrez was convicted and
sentenced to death for the brutal murder of Escolastica Har-
rison, an 85-year-old woman who lived in a mobile home park
in Brownsville, Texas, with her nephew Avel Cuellar. See
Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d 883, 886 (Tex. Crim. App.
2011). As a result of his friendship with Cuellar, Gutierrez
became acquainted with Harrison and occasionally ran er-
rands for her. Ibid. Cuellar, Gutierrez, and other friends

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Alito, J., dissenting
gathered to drink behind Harrison's home—and Cuellar,
while inebriated, revealed that Harrison kept her entire life
savings (more than $600,000) in her home because she
distrusted banks. See Gutierrez v. Stephens, 2013 WL
12092544, *1 (SD Tex., Oct. 3, 2013); Ex parte Gutierrez, 337
S. W. 3d, at 886.
When Gutierrez heard this, he hatched a plan to break
into the mobile home and steal the money. Id., at 886. He
recruited two accomplices—Rene Garcia and Pedro Gracia—
and on September 5, 1998, the three men went to Harrison's
trailer home to execute the plan. Ibid. By the time they
left the scene, Harrison had been beaten and stabbed 13
times in her face and neck with two different instruments.
See id., at 887, and n. 2. When Cuellar came home that
night, he reported discovering his elderly aunt's dead body
face-down in a pool of blood. Id., at 886.
Several witnesses told detectives that they had seen Gu-
tierrez at the mobile home park on the day of the murder.
Ibid.; see Gutierrez v. Stephens, No. 1:09–cv–00022 (SD Tex.,
July 30, 2012), ECF Doc. 23–96, pp. 22–23. Detectives vis-
ited Gutierrez's home but were told he was not there.
Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 886. The next day,
Gutierrez voluntarily appeared at the police station and
made the frst of three conficting statements. Ibid. He
told detectives that on the day of the murder, he was driving
with a friend far away from the mobile home park. Ibid.;
see 93 F. 4th 267, 269 (CA5 2024). This alibi fell through,
however, when the friend told a conficting story. Ex parte
Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 886. In addition, Garcia and
Gracia confessed to involvement in the crime, named Gutier-
rez as an accomplice, and said he was inside the mobile home
when Harrison was killed.
1
Id., at 891; ECF Doc. 2–2, at 2.
Based on these statements and other evidence, Gutierrez
1
These statements were not admitted at trial. See Ex parte Gutierrez,
337 S. W. 3d, at 891.

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Alito, J., dissenting
was arrested. Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 887;
ECF Doc. 2–2, at 2.
At the police station, Gutierrez agreed to give a second
statement. Id., at 2. Abandoning his earlier story, he ad-
mitted that he had planned to “ `rip off' ” Harrison, but he
claimed that he had not wanted to murder her. Ex parte
Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 887. He told the police he had
been waiting at a park when Garcia and Gracia carried out
the scheme. Ibid. When they later met, he asserted, Gar-
cia was holding a screwdriver covered in blood and said he
had killed Harrison. Ibid.
The following day, Gutierrez gave his third conficting
statement. Ibid. In a signed confession, he said that Gar-
cia was supposed to lure Harrison out of her home so that
Gutierrez could enter through the back of the trailer and
steal the money, but when Harrison saw Gutierrez enter her
home, Garcia knocked her out and began to stab her with
a screwdriver. Ibid. Gutierrez admitted that both he and
Garcia were armed with screwdrivers during the robbery.
Gutierrez, 2013 WL 12092544, *2. Gutierrez said that he
took the money while Garcia was stabbing Harrison and that
Gracia drove everyone away from the scene. Ibid. The
State of Texas then charged Gutierrez with capital murder
committed in the course of a robbery. Ibid.
2
Gutierrez moved to suppress his signed confession, ar-
guing that it was coerced and that the police continued to
question him after he had invoked his right to counsel and
his right to remain silent. See id., at *20. After conduct-
ing a hearing at which Gutierrez and two police offcers testi-
fed, the judge denied the motion and issued detailed fndings
of fact.
2
Ibid.; see also ECF Doc. 23–66, at 47–125.
2
After the hearing, the judge initially denied the suppression motion
orally, but after Gutierrez appealed, the case was remanded, at the State's
request, for the issuance of wr itten fi ndi ngs. G u t i e r rez, 2013 WL

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Alito, J., dissenting
Gutierrez appealed, but the TCCA affrmed. See Gutier-
rez, 2013 WL 12092544, *21.
3
At trial, the State's theory was that Gutierrez was guilty
of murder either as a principal or a party to the crime. Ex
parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 888. The State relied on
Texas's “law of parties,” under which “[a] person is crimi-
nally responsible as a party to an offense if the offense is
committed . . . by the conduct of another for which he is
criminally responsible.” Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 7.01(a)
(West 2021). Because Gutierrez had admitted to participat-
ing in the robbery, the State argued that he could be found
guilty of murder even if he was not the one who delivered
the fatal blows. See ECF Doc. 23–102, at 69–70.
Gutierrez's defense offered a version of events that dif-
fered from all three of Gutierrez's prior stories. The new
account was that Cuellar had fatally stabbed Harrison. Gu-
tierrez, 2013 WL 12092544, *3. The defense “intimated that
the police had manufactured Gutierrez's statements” and
criticized the police for conducting a shoddy investigation.
Ibid. The jury found Gutierrez guilty.
At the penalty phase of the trial, the State presented evi-
dence that Gutierrez had a long history of crime and vio-
lence, including burglaries, assault on a police offcer, and
threats to kill an assistant district attorney and a prison
guard. Ibid. The jury found (1) that Gutierrez posed a
“continuing threat to society,” (2) that he had “intended to
kill the deceased or . . . anticipated that a human life would
be taken,” and (3) that any mitigating circumstance were in-
suffcient to warrant a sentence of life imprisonment without
parole. ECF Doc. 23–108, at 45–48; ECF Doc. 23–109, at 4–
12092544, *20–*21. Gutierrez then took a second appeal, and the Texas
Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) affrmed. Gutierrez v. Stephens,
No. 1:09–cv–00022 (Jan. 26, 2009), ECF Doc. 2–2, pp. 2–4; see Gutierrez,
2013 WL 12092544, *21.

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5; see Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 37.071, §§ 2(b), (e)(1)
(Vernon 2006). Based on these fndings, the judge imposed
a sentence of death.
Gutierrez appealed and argued, among many other things,
that his confession should have been suppressed, but the
TCCA affrmed his conviction and sentence. See Ex parte
Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 888; ECF Doc. 19, at 58–60.
B
The end of direct appellate review was just the start of a
new litigation saga spanning 23 years (and counting). After
the conclusion of direct appellate review in 2002, Gutierrez
fled multiple petitions for state and federal post-conviction
relief, none of which has been successful. See 93 F. 4th, at
269–270. And Gutierrez has told us that he intends to fle
yet another petition for state post-conviction relief. See
Brief for Petitioner 40–41.
Among the many claims that Gutierrez has advanced in
post-trial litigation, the claim involved here—that he is enti-
tled to DNA testing of items found at the murder scene—has
a prominent place. At trial, however, his counsel declined
to request DNA testing. Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d,
at 897. As recounted by the TCCA, “the record affrma-
tively shows that DNA testing was available to appellant
before trial,” but “defense counsel apparently did not have
testing performed on those same items because of sound
trial strategy.” Ibid. (emphasis added). Instead of risking
what testing might reveal, counsel “used the fact that the
Brownsville Police Department failed to test the evidence
containing biological DNA evidence to argue the lack of in-
vestigation and the existence of reasonable doubt during the
trial.” Id., at 896. The lack of testing fgured prominently
in his cross-examination of prosecution witnesses and was
repeatedly raised during summation. Id., at 896–897, and
n. 45.

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Alito, J., dissenting
The decision to forgo DNA testing at trial did not pay off,
so after his conviction, Gutierrez changed course and de-
manded testing in post-conviction proceedings. Chapter 64
of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure governs such re-
quests, and Gutierrez fled his frst Chapter 64
3
motion in
2010. See 93 F. 4th, at 269. He sought testing of: (1) a
blood sample taken from Harrison; (2) a blood-stained shirt
belonging to Cuellar; (3) nail scrapings from Harrison; (4)
blood samples collected from Cuellar's bathroom, from a rain-
coat located in or just outside Cuellar's bedroom, and from
the sofa in the front room of the home; and (5) a loose hair
recovered from Harrison's fnger. Ex parte Gutierrez, 337
S. W. 3d, at 888. According to Gutierrez, the testing would
show that he had not entered Harrison's house and would
“support his position that he neither murdered Mrs. Har-
rison nor anticipated her murder.” Ibid.
The trial court denied this motion, and the TCCA affrmed.
Id., at 888–889, 901–902. The TCCA explained that Chapter
64 authorizes post-conviction DNA testing only when the re-
sults would affect the applicant's conviction, not his sentence.
Id., at 899–901. And in any event, it explained, favorable
DNA results would not undermine the jury's guilty verdict
because they would not “make it less probable” that Gutier-
rez planned and participated in the crime. Id., at 901. Nor,
it added, would such results affect Gutierrez's eligibility for
the death penalty because “the record facts satisfy the En-
mund/Tison culpability requirements that he played a major
role in the underlying robbery and that his acts showed a
reckless indifference to human life.” Ibid.
4
3
The majority refers to this provision as “Article 64,” but because the
lower courts consistently refer to the provision as “Chapter 64” and the
associated motions for DNA testing as “Chapter 64 motions,” I use that
terminology here.
4
See Enmund v. Florida, 458 U. S. 782, 797 (1982); Tison v. Arizona,
481 U. S. 137, 157–158 (1987).

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Alito, J., dissenting
Gutierrez fled additional Chapter 64 motions for DNA
testing in June 2019 and July 2021, but the trial court denied
those motions, and each time the TCCA affrmed on the same
grounds. Gutierrez v. State, 2020 WL 918669, *6–*9 (Feb.
26, 2020) (per curiam); App. 477a–479a.
C
This brings us to the latest chapter—Gutierrez's current
suit. In September 2019, Gutierrez sued Cameron County
District Attorney Luis Saenz and other Texas offcials in fed-
eral court under Rev. Stat. § 1979, 42 U. S. C. § 1983. See
Complaint in Gutierrez v. Saenz, No. 1:19–cv–00185 (SD
Tex., Sept. 26, 2019), ECF Doc. 1. Gutierrez asserted sev-
eral facial and as-applied constitutional challenges to Chap-
ter 64, including a Fourteenth Amendment due process
claim, a First Amendment access-to-courts claim, and an
Eighth Amendment cruel-and-unusual-punishment claim.
See ibid.
The District Court rejected almost all of Gutierrez's
claims, but the court held that Chapter 64 is unconstitutional
insofar as it allows a defendant to seek post-conviction DNA
testing to challenge his conviction but not his sentence. 565
F. Supp. 3d 892, 910–911 (SD Tex. 2021). The District Court
entered a partial declaratory judgment for Gutierrez on that
ground but did not issue the injunction Gutierrez had sought.
Ibid.; see 2020 WL 12771965, *6 (SD Tex., June 2, 2020) (de-
nying Gutierrez's request for a “preliminary and permanent
injunction” requiring Saenz to turn over the requested evi-
dence (internal quotation marks omitted)). The State ap-
pealed, but Gutierrez did not cross-appeal, so the only issue
before the Fifth Circuit was whether Gutierrez was entitled
to a declaratory judgment on the one constitutional claim
accepted by the District Court.
The Fifth Circuit did not reach the merits of that claim
because it held that Gutierrez lacked standing. Our test for
Article III standing, set out in Lujan v. Defenders of Wild-

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Alito, J., dissenting
life, 504 U. S. 555, 560 (1992), has three prongs, and the Fifth
Circuit found that Gutierrez failed the third prong—that is,
the court found that Gutierrez could not show that his
claimed injury (lack of DNA testing) was “ `likely' ” to be
redressed by the relief that could at that point be awarded.
See 93 F. 4th, at 275; Lujan, 504 U. S., at 561 (“[I]t must be
likely, as opposed to merely speculative, that the injury will
be redressed by a favorable decision” (internal quotation
marks omitted)).
In Reed v. Goertz, this Court recently applied this test
under related circumstances. As I will explain, there are
critical differences between that case and the case at hand,
but there are similarities that seem to have led the majority
astray. In Reed, a prisoner sentenced to death (Rodney
Reed) brought a § 1983 action against a district attorney and
sought a declaratory judgment that a particular provision
of Chapter 64 (its chain-of-custody provision, Tex. Code
Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 64.03(a)(1)(A)(ii) (Vernon 2018)) vio-
lates the Constitution. This Court held that this declara-
tory judgment would redress the prisoner's deprivation of
DNA testing because it would “ `substantially' ” alter the
likelihood of the district attorney's ordering DNA testing.
Reed, 598 U. S., at 234.
There were multiple issues in Reed, and the Court's discus-
sion of redressability was terse. In its entirety, it was as
follows:
“[I]f a federal court concludes that Texas's post-
conviction DNA testing procedures violate due process,
that court order would eliminate the state prosecutor's
justifcation for denying DNA testing. It is `substan-
tially likely' that the state prosecutor would abide by
such a court order. In other words, in `terms of our
“standing ” precedent, the courts would have ordered a
change in a legal status,' and `the practical consequence of
that change would amount to a signifcant increase in the
likelihood' that the state prosecutor would grant access

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Alito, J., dissenting
to the requested evidence and that Reed therefore
`would obtain relief that directly redresses the injury
suffered.' ” Ibid. (emphasis added; citation omitted).
5
The Court held that the prisoner satisfed this test. In
other words, the Court was persuaded that if he got the de-
claratory judgment he wanted, it was “substantially likely”
that the district attorney would order testing.
The Fifth Circuit faithfully applied this test in its decision
below, taking into account the particular facts of Gutierrez's
case. It noted that the TCCA has repeatedly held that Gu-
tierrez would still be responsible for the murder under the
law of parties and would still be death-penalty eligible even
if DNA testing provided the results he wanted. 93 F. 4th,
at 272–273, 275. And it thus held that a decision in Gutier-
rez's favor on his constitutional claim would not make it sub-
stantially likely that the district attorney would release the
items for testing.
6
Id., at 275.
Today's decision, in contrast, fagrantly distorts the stand-
ard that Reed articulated. Indeed, the majority edits Reed's
critical language in a way that would draw rebuke if done
by an attorney in a brief fled in this Court. Reed's full dis-
cussion of redressability was quoted above. It consists of
three sentences. The majority's analysis is based entirely
on the frst sentence, which states: “ `[I]f a federal court con-
cludes that Texas's post-conviction DNA testing procedures
5
Reed advanced the theory that the Court adopted. His brief said that
“the question here is whether declaratory relief is likely to stop Goertz
from relying on the CCA's unconstitutional interpretation of Article 64 to
continue denying DNA testing. The answer is yes.” Reply Brief in
Reed v. Goertz, O. T. 2022, No. 21–442, p. 6.
6
The Fifth Circuit's assessment of the likely effect of the declaratory
judgment that Gutierrez sought was borne out when the TCCA affrmed
the denial of Gutierrez's third motion for DNA testing in June 2024—after
he had obtained the favorable declaratory judgment in the District Court.
See App. 467a–468a.

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Alito, J., dissenting
violate due process,' that court order would redress [a pris-
oner's] injury by `eliminat[ing]' the state prosecutor's reli-
ance on Article 64 as a reason for denying DNA testing.”
See ante, at 319 (quoting Reed, 598 U. S., at 234). The sec-
ond and third sentences explain why the conclusion drawn in
the frst sentence was true in Reed's case: because the partic-
ular declaratory judgment that Reed sought (striking down
Chapter 64's chain-of-custody requirement) would “substan-
tially” increase the likelihood that the district attorney
would turn over the requested items for DNA testing. Id.,
at 234. But the majority pretends those sentences do not
exist.
This distortion is bad enough, but to make matters worse,
the majority then criticizes the Fifth Circuit for “transform-
ing the redressability inquiry into a guess as to whether a
favorable court decision will in fact ultimately cause the
prosecutor to turn over the evidence.” Ante, at 318 (citing
93 F. 4th, at 274). In the majority's view, this Court appar-
ently should not consider whether the District Court's judg-
ment is likely to result in Gutierrez obtaining relief, but
whether the District Court's judgment removes just one of
the numerous “barrier[s] . . . between Gutierrez and the re-
quested testing.” Ante, at 319. The majority's new test
makes a hash of redressability. It appears that, under this
new test, the likelihood of redress is simply not relevant.
That most certainly is not what Reed held.
Under the real Reed test, a plaintiff like Gutierrez must
show that a favorable decision on his constitutional claim is
“ `substantially likely' ” to prompt the district attorney to
allow DNA testing. 598 U. S., at 234. And in this case, un-
like in Reed, it is clear that the only relief that Gutierrez is
in a position to seek—reinstatement of the District Court's
declaratory judgment—is most unlikely to cause respondent
Saenz to order DNA testing. That is the conclusion that the
Fifth Circuit reached after carefully considering the relevant

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facts, and that court was right. The following part of this
opinion will explain why.
7
II
A
The Texas courts have provided three reasons why Gutier-
rez is not entitled to the testing he seeks. Any one of these,
if sound, would justify the denial of testing.
First, both the trial court and the TCCA have held that
Gutierrez is not entitled to post-conviction DNA testing be-
cause such testing is unavailable under Chapter 64 to show
ineligibility for the death penalty, and Gutierrez could not
show by a preponderance of the evidence that he would not
have been convicted if he obtained favorable DNA test re-
sults. See Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 899–901;
7
According to the majority, the Fifth Circuit held that “Gutierrez lacked
`standing to bring this suit,' ” and it therefore concluded that Gutierrez
lacked standing to assert any of the claims he originally brought. See
ante, at 318. But just a few paragraphs after the part of the opinion in
which the language quoted by the majority appears, the opinion makes it
clear that its standing analysis focused on the one claim that was before
it. See 93 F. 4th 267, 271 (2024). That claim, the opinion noted, was that
“the state violates due process by permitting testing only if the evidence
could establish the prisoner would not have been convicted, thereby pre-
venting testing if resulting evidence would be relevant only to the sen-
tence.” Ibid. It then set out respondents' standing argument: “The de-
fendants allege that Gutierrez has no standing to make that claim.” Ibid.
(emphasis added). Thus, the Fifth Circuit's opinion is best understood as
holding only that affrmance of the claim that respondents appealed—that
Chapter 64 violates due process by barring defendants from seeking post-
conviction DNA testing to establish innocence of the death penalty—
would not redress Gutierrez's injury. And in any event, the redressability
inquiry had to be limited in that way because Gutierrez did not cross-
appeal the District Court's rejection of his other claims.
Attempting to evade the cross-appeal rule, the majority characterizes
this case as one in which an appellee merely wishes to defend a judgment
whose “scope” did not reach the entirety of his claim. Ante, at 318, n. 3.
But the District Court did not simply fail to award Gutierrez complete
relief on the one claim on which he prevailed. Rather, it entered judg-
ment against him on different claims.

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Alito, J., dissenting
Gutierrez, 2020 WL 918669, *5–*8. Second, both the trial
court and the TCCA have concluded that even favorable
DNA test results would not help Gutierrez because he would
still be responsible for the murder and would still satisfy
the Enmund/Tison Eighth Amendment requirements. See
Ex parte Gutierrez, 337 S. W. 3d, at 901; Gutierrez, 2020
WL 918669, *8. Third, the trial court found that Gutierrez's
application for DNA testing was made for the purpose of
delay. See id., at *5. This fnding of fact was not addressed
by the TCCA. See id., at *9.
Contrary to the majority's suggestion, a favorable declara-
tory judgment respecting the frst of these reasons (Chapter
64 does not allow post-conviction DNA testing to prove ineli-
gibility for the death penalty) would not remove “the . . .
barrier Article 64 erected between Gutierrez and the re-
quested testing ”; it would remove a barrier. Ante, at 319
(emphasis added). The District Court's declaratory judg-
ment regarding the constitutionality of Chapter 64's limited
grounds for post-conviction DNA testing, even if upheld by
the Fifth Circuit and this Court, would affect only that rea-
son and not the other two. And even if the TCCA did not
accept the trial court's fnding that Gutierrez fled his Chap-
ter 64 motion for the purpose of delay, the TCCA would al-
most certainly adhere to its prior decisions holding that fa-
vorable DNA results would not show that Gutierrez was
innocent of the crime or ineligible for the death penalty. As
a result, the only relief Gutierrez can possibly get in this case
would not result in court-ordered testing unless the TCCA
reverses course in an utterly unforeseeable way.
Gutierrez argues, however, that even if the declaratory
judgment would not lead the Texas courts to grant DNA
testing, respondent Saenz would still have discretion to turn
over the items and might do so. See Brief for Petitioner 37–
38. But Gutierrez does not spell out why Saenz might do
that. His argument is based on rank speculation, and that
is not enough to support redressability. See Lujan, 504
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Furthermore, nothing in the record suggests that there is
any likelihood that Saenz would do what Gutierrez wants.
The declaratory judgment would not require Saenz to order
testing. And he would know that the testing would be
pointless because even if the items were tested and revealed
what Gutierrez hopes for, the Texas courts would not disturb
his conviction or sentence.
Not only is there no reason to think that Saenz—for some
unknown reason—might nevertheless order DNA testing,
but his conduct to date strongly suggests the opposite.
Even after the District Court issued its declaratory judg-
ment, he refused to order testing. And Gutierrez cannot ex-
plain why Saenz has steadfastly declined to allow testing
ever since. If he had any inclination to allow testing, he
could have done that at any point during this litigation—for
example, when Gutierrez fled his petition, when this Court
granted review, at any point during the briefng process, be-
fore or after argument, or yesterday. Not only has he not
done so, he has steadfastly maintained that he will not do so.
His position is that this case should be dismissed!
Unable to explain why affrmance of the District Court's
declaratory judgment might change Saenz's mind, the major-
ity contends that a favorable decision on other constitutional
claims asserted in Gutierrez's complaint might do the trick.
And it criticizes the Fifth Circuit for “bas[ing] its assessment
of redressability on the declaratory judgment the District
Cour t later issued, rather than Gutierrez's complai nt. ”
Ante, at 317.
This reasoning is fundamentally wrong and, if allowed to
stand, will corrupt our Article III case law. Our standing
requirements “persist throughout all stages of litigation.”
Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U. S. 693, 705 (2013). “That
means that standing `must be met by persons seeking appel-
late review, just as it must be met by persons appearing in
courts of frst instance.' ” Ibid. (quoting Arizonans for Of-
fcial English v. Arizona, 520 U. S. 43, 64 (1997)). The con-

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Alito, J., dissenting
stitutional claims on which the majority relies were rejected
by the District Court, and Gutierrez did not appeal that part
of the judgment. As a result, the best relief that Gutierrez
could now obtain in this case is an affrmance of the District
Court's declaratory judgment—and for the reasons already
discussed, that relief would not make DNA testing substan-
tially likely.
For all these the reasons, Gutierrez cannot satisfy Reed's
real test for redressability.
B
The majority treats this case as indistinguishable from
Reed, but that is not correct. An examination of the situa-
tion in that case provides a clear explanation for the Reed
Court's conclusion that its test for redressability was met.
And once that is understood, it is clear that the present case
is different.
1
Rodney Reed was convicted and sentenced to death for the
murder of Stacey Lee Stites, whose body was found partially
clothed and abandoned near a back country road. Reed v.
State, 541 S. W. 3d 759, 762 (Tex. Crim. App. 2017). Based
on an examination of her body, the police concluded that she
had been sexually assaulted and strangled with a belt found
at the scene. Ibid. DNA found on semen in Stites's body
matched Reed's genetic profle, and Reed was subsequently
arrested and charged with her murder. See id., at 763. At
trial, Reed argued (among other things) that he and Stites
were in a romantic relationship, that they had engaged in
consensual intercourse, and that the real culprit was Stites's
fance, Jimmy Fennell. Ex parte Reed, 271 S. W. 3d 698, 710
(Tex. Crim. App. 2008). The jury was not persuaded, and
Reed was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to
death. Id., at 712.
Reed fled a Chapter 64 motion seeking DNA testing of
the belt and more than 35 other items that were found either

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on Stites's body, at the scene of the crime, or in or near the
truck she shared with Fennell. Reed, 541 S. W. 3d, at 764–
765. Applying Chapter 64, the TCCA ruled out consider-
ation of evidence that fell into either of two categories. See
id., at 773. First, the TCCA refused to consider 21 items on
the ground that they did not satisfy Chapter 64's chain-of-
custody requirement.
8
Id., at 769–770. Among these were
the strap and buckle from the belt with which Stites had
apparently been strangled. Id., at 769. Second, the TCCA
excluded other items on the ground that they were not rea-
sonably likely to contain biological material suitable for test-
ing. Id., at 772. Eight items remained for the TCCA to
consider, and fve of them were found in or near the truck,
not at the crime scene. Id., at 774–775. The court then
found that favorable results with respect to these eight items
would not have shown by a preponderance of the evidence
that Reed was not guilty. Id., at 773–777.
2
Once the role that the chain-of-custody rule played in the
TCCA's analysis is understood, the support for this Court's
redressability fnding in Reed is easy to understand. The
declaratory judgment that Reed sought—striking down the
chain-of-custody rule—would have critically undermined the
TCCA's holding with respect to the potential impact of DNA
testing. Twenty-one additional items, including the belt,
could have been considered. If Fennell's DNA, but not
Reed's, had been detected on the belt and perhaps other
items found at the scene, that would have provided signif-
cant support for Reed's theory that Fennell was the mur-
derer. As a result, the declaratory judgment might well
have led to a state-court decision ordering DNA testing, and
that possibility would have given the district attorney a rea-
son to turn over the items even before such a state-court
8
See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 64.03(a)(1)(A)(ii).

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Alito, J., dissenting
decision was handed down. The result would have been “a
signifcant increase in the likelihood that the state prosecu-
tor would grant access to the requested evidence.” Reed,
598 U. S., at 234 (emphasis added; internal quotation marks
omitted).
In response, the majority argues that even if the chain of
custody rule were held to be unconstitutional, the district
attorney could have denied Reed's request for another rea-
son. Ante, at 318–319. That is true but beside the point.
Under this Court's decision in Reed, all that was required to
show redressability was “a signifcant increase in the likeli-
hood” that the district attorney would allow testing.
C
Gutierrez's case presents a far different situation. Here,
the TCCA has held that, even if DNA testing failed to detect
Gutierrez's DNA and detected the presence of Cuellar's
DNA, Gutierrez could not establish that he was not guilty of
murder or that he is ineligible for a death sentence. The
TCCA noted that, since Cuellar lived with Harrison in the
same trailer home and was the person who found her dead
body, detecting his DNA on many items in the house would
not necessarily be incriminating. See Gutierrez, 2020 WL
918669, *7–*8. And more important, even if Cuellar's DNA
was detected on the most important items, such as the mate-
rial found under Harrison's fngernails, that would be of little
value to Gutierrez. It would suggest that Cuellar was one
of the individuals who stabbed Harrison—but that would not
affect Gutierrez's culpability or his sentence. Whether the
fatal blows were administered by Garcia, Gracia, Cuellar, or
some combination of these men, Gutierrez would still be
guilty of murder under the law of parties because he partici-
pated in the scheme. See Tex. Penal Code Ann. § 7.01(a).
And because he had reason to know that the execution of his
scheme could well result in the loss of life, he would still be
eligible for the death penalty. See Enmund v. Florida, 458

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Alito, J., dissenting
U. S. 782, 797 (1982); Tison v. Arizona, 481 U. S. 137, 157–
158 (1987). Thus, a favorable decision on Gutierrez's consti-
tutional argument would not bolster his challenge to his
sentence.
Gutierrez responds that favorable DNA results might
change the TCCA's thinking because that court's holding on
the effect of DNA evidence did not take into account newly
discovered evidence that he wants to introduce. See Brief
for Petitioner 38–42. The majority suggests that, in assess-
ing whether Gutierrez's injury of not receiving DNA testing
is redressable, the Fifth Circuit should have considered Gu-
tierrez's assertion in his complaint that favorable DNA re-
sults along with the new evidence could render him ineligi-
ble for the death penalty. See ante, at 317. But the TCCA
has held that only evidence in the trial record may be consid-
ered in determining whether post-conviction DNA testing is
allowed. See Holberg v. State, 425 S. W. 3d 282, 285 (Tex.
Crim. App. 2014) (“[T]his Court will not consider post-trial
evidence when deciding whether or not the appellant has car-
ried her burden to establish by a preponderance of the evi-
dence that she would not have been convicted had exculpa-
tory results been obtained through DNA testing.”).
9
We
have no basis for disregarding that limitation here. We are,
of course, bound by the TCCA's interpretation of Texas law,
and no question regarding the constitutionality of this fea-
ture of Texas law is now before us.
10
9
A similar limitation applies in federal habeas proceedings. See Cullen
v. Pinholster, 563 U. S. 170, 181 (2011) (holding that habeas review of a
state-court conviction pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2254(d)(1) “is limited to
the record that was before the state court that adjudicated the claim on
the merits”).
10
This is so for three reasons. First, if Gutierrez wanted to challenge
those parts of the District Court's judgment, he needed to fle a cross-
appeal, but he did not do so. See, e. g., Northwest Airlines, Inc. v. County
of Kent, 510 U. S. 355, 364 (1994) (collecting cases). Second, the constitu-
tionality of this provision is not within the question on which we granted

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Alito, J., dissenting
Not only does the majority's redressability analysis take
into account evidence that this binding state-law rule ex-
cludes, but the majority seems to think it is relevant that
“Gutierrez has long maintained that the police coerced him
into confessing that he was in Harrison's home on the night
of the murder.” Ante, at 310.
The majority does not see ft to mention that the state
courts have defnitively rejected Gutierrez's argument that
the confession was coerced, that Texas law would almost cer-
tainly bar him from raising the same claim again in a post-
conviction proceeding,
11
and that the federal habeas statute
would likewise bar consideration of the claim.
12
***
This decision's only practical effect will be to aid and abet
Gutierrez's efforts to run out the clock on the execution of
certiorari. And third, the question was not briefed or argued by the
parties.
11
See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 11.071, §§ 5(a)(1)–(a)(3) (Vernon
Cum. Supp. 2024) (providing that a defendant can only fle a second habeas
petition challenging his death sentence if “the current claims and issues
have not been and could not have been presented previously,” no rational
juror would have found the defendant guilty but for a constitutional viola-
tion, or no rational juror would have answered one or more of the special
issues in the State's favor but for a constitutional violation); Ex parte
Blue, 230 S. W. 3d 151, 161 (Tex. Crim. App. 2007) (noting that a state
habeas applicant can only succeed on his claim under Art. 11.071, § 5(a)(3),
in the “rare” case when “constitutional error . . . so permeated the State's
evidence relevant to one of the special issues upon which it carries the
burden of proof that, absent the error, it is practically inconceivable that
any rational juror would actually answer the special issues in a way that
mandates the death penalty” (emphasis added)).
12
Because a claim regarding the admissibility of Gutierrez's confession
would constitute an attack on his conviction, it cannot be raised in a suit
under § 1983. See Heck v. Humphrey, 512 U. S. 477, 486–487 (1994). And
any attempt to raise the issue in a federal habeas petition would almost
certainly fail. See 28 U. S. C. §§ 2244(b)(2), 2254(d).

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his sentence. And if the decision is taken seriously as a
precedent on Article III standing, it will do serious damage.
I therefore dissent.

Page Proof Pending Publication
Reporter’s N
ote
The attached opinion has been revised to refect the usual publication
and citation style of the United States Reports. The revised pagination
makes available the offcial United States Reports citation in advance of
publication. The syllabus has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions
for the convenience of the reader and constitutes no part of the opinion of
the Court. A list of counsel who argued or fled briefs in this case, and
who were members of the bar of this Court at the time this case was
argued, has been inserted following the syllabus. Other revisions may
include adjustments to formatting, captions, citation form, and any errant
punctuation. The following additional edits were made:
None