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

The death row inmate, Ruben Gutierrez, appealed a lower court's ruling against his challenge to a Texas law limiting the use of DNA testing after a person has been convicted of a crime. The Supreme Court is due to hear the case during its new nine-month term that begins on Monday.

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