WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court July 16 granted a stay of execution for a Catholic inmate in Texas, Ruben Gutierrez, just 20 minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection.

The high court’s brief order said the stay would remain in effect until the justices decide whether they should review his appeal for DNA testing that he has long claimed would help prove his innocence in his 1998 conviction of the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman.

If the court denies his postconviction DNA testing request, the execution reprieve will be lifted.

Just before the court’s decision on Gutierrez was announced, Catholic Mobilizing Network, which works to end the death penalty, posted on X: “God, inspire the hearts of our justices who hold his life in their hands.”

This is not the first time Gutierrez was granted a stay of execution. The Supreme Court similarly granted him a stay four years ago, about an hour before his scheduled execution, over questions about having a spiritual adviser accompany him during his execution.

Before that scheduled execution, Sister Helen Prejean, a Sister of St. Joseph and longtime opponent of capital punishment, posted on then-Twitter that “Texas officials have spent years blocking Ruben Gutierrez’s requests for DNA testing of key evidence that could prove his innocence, but they made it a top priority to test him for #COVID19 ahead of tomorrow’s planned execution. Our justice system’s priorities are so out of whack.”

In the plea four years ago to the nation’s high court, Gutierrez had the backing of the Texas Catholic Conference, which filed a friend of the court brief stressing that inmates should be allowed to have spiritual advisers with them at the time of their execution. The Supreme Court affirmed this in 2022.

When Gutierrez heard the court’s current decision, he was “visibly emotional,” a prison spokeswoman told The Associated Press.

She also said he prayed with a prison chaplain and said: “God is great!”

Shawn Nolan, an attorney for the death-row inmate, said in a statement that with the court-issued stay of execution, he hopes that the DNA testing can be done to prove that Gutierrez “should not be executed now or in the future.”

In their petition to the Supreme Court, Gutierrez’s attorneys said that their client has not only been denied the DNA testing he has “repeatedly and consistently sought for over a decade,” but they said he also faces “execution for a crime he did not commit. No one has any interest in a wrongful execution,” they added.