Death Penalty, Nuclear Waste and More: Supreme Court Rounds Out Coming Term

The Supreme Court on Friday added more than a dozen cases to the docket for its new term, which begins next week.

Among the cases: a death row prisoner seeking DNA testing of evidence he claims would exonerate him, a dispute about whether a federal agency exceeded its bounds by licensing a private entity to store spent nuclear fuel, and a legal fight over when courts should begin to consider the reasonableness of an officer’s use of force during a deadly shooting.

The three cases all stem from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, which often finds itself to the right of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court agreed to hear a death penalty case challenging the denial of DNA testing to a man who claims that such a test would prove his innocence in the 1998 murder of a Texas woman.

The man, Ruben Gutierrez, asked the court to take his case after a divided panel of the Fifth Circuit rejected his appeal, clearing the way for his execution.

The justices halted his execution in July, just minutes before he was scheduled to be killed.

The case centers on whether a prisoner can bring a constitutional challenge against a state DNA statute that could limit access to potentially exonerating evidence.