Through police investigations, all three robbers were arrested, but before the trial process, one of them, Pedro Gracia, absconded while out on bail and he remains on the run till today.
Harrison, a Hispanic-American, has worked as a schoolteacher and mainly taught third grade at Cromack Elementary, which was located in one of the poorest parts of Brownsville.
[4] According to sources, Gutierrez hatched a plan to rob Harrison after acquiring the knowledge of the elderly woman having a total of US$600,000 in cash in her possession, which was due to her mistrust of banks.
[3][5] Late in the night of September 5, 1998, the body of Escolastica Harrison was discovered by her nephew Avel Cuellar, who returned home to find her lying face down in a pool of blood, and her bedroom being ransacked.
[3] One of the suspects, Pedro Gracia, was granted bail before his trial as he had cooperated with the police and had expressed his intention to testify against the other two perpetrators.
However, in June 1999, Gracia had absconded while out on bail and did not turn up for a pre-trial court hearing, and hence he was placed on the police's wanted list.
The disappearance of Gracia left both Rene Garcia and Ruben Gutierrez as the remaining suspects in custody for the murder of Escolastica Harrison.
[6] While Pedro Gracia remains at large for the murder of Escolastica Harrison, both his accomplices Ruben Gutierrez and Rene Garcia were separately tried in April and June 1999 respectively for the case.
The charge preferred against both men was capital murder, an offence that warranted either the death penalty or a life sentence under Texas state law.
[9][10] Rene Garcia, the second suspect to stand trial, reached a plea bargain with the prosecution, who agreed to take the death penalty off the table.
Throughout his appeal process, Gutierrez maintained his innocence and stated that he never killed Escolastica Harrison despite admitting to his part in the robbery.
[15] On August 30, 2018, a senior federal judge granted a stay of execution in light of Gutierrez's change of attorney and a pending legal motion.
[21] Shortly after his failed bid for a post-conviction DNA test in February 2020, Gutierrez's execution was once again scheduled to be carried out on June 16, 2020.
His lawyers argued that the multiple specimens of evidence, including the nail scrapings extracted from Harrison, a loose hair wrapped around one of her fingers and various blood samples from the interior of her house, were untested and it might be crucial to ascertain whether he was innocent of the crime.
[39][40] Legal experts noted that with reference to Gutierrez's case, it was an unusual outcome in view of the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court rarely granted a stay of execution at the 11th hour before a death sentence was set to be carried out.