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.

A man in Texas is scheduled to be put to death later this month, in what would be the country's first execution for "shaken baby syndrome". The controversial diagnosis has been successfully challenged in some previous criminal cases.

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.