Maria Cristina Gutierrez (February 28, 1951 – January 30, 2004) was an American criminal defense attorney based in Baltimore, Maryland, who represented several high-profile defendants in the 1990s. She was the first Latina to be counsel of record in a case before the Supreme Court of the United States. In 2001, Gutierrez was disbarred, with her consent, following multiple complaints from clients who paid her for legal work she failed to perform. At the time, Gutierrez was dying from a combination of multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and her health was rapidly deteriorating.

She served as trial counsel for Adnan Syed, the Baltimore-area teenager who was convicted in 2000 of murdering his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison. The controversial case gained renewed national attention in 2014 after being the subject of the first season of the podcast Serial.

In a post-conviction hearing, a judge ruled that Gutierrez "rendered ineffective assistance".^{[citation needed]}

Gutierrez attended high school at Notre Dame Prep in Baltimore, Maryland. She received her undergraduate degree from Antioch College and her juris doctor from the University of Baltimore School of Law. She was appointed as an attorney to the Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore and later joined the firm of Murphy and Associates, headed by William H. Murphy, Jr., former judge of the Baltimore City Circuit court who was to become one of Baltimore's leading criminal defense and civil rights trial lawyers.

Gutierrez graduated from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 1980 and began her career with the Office of the Public Defender in Baltimore after a brief clerkship with then Judge William H. Murphy, Jr. After several years she left the PD's office and joined the firm of William H. Murphy, Jr. and Associates. By most accounts, Gutierrez was a tenacious attorney, representing many individuals who appeared to have hopeless cases.

In 1986 Jamal Craig, an employee of his mother's day-care facility in Howard County, was charged with child abuse. Gutierrez represented Craig, and he was acquitted of all charges. His mother, Sandra Craig, had also been charged with child abuse. Gutierrez joined her trial team. Ms. Craig was convicted following a trial at which the child complainant was allowed to testify by closed-circuit television. The Maryland Court of Appeals reversed her conviction under the Confrontation Clause, but the Supreme Court of the United States, in 1990, overturned that ruling by 5–4 vote in Maryland v. Craig. Gutierrez was co-counsel at the Supreme Court with her partner, Billy Murphy, who argued the case. Despite the setback at the Supreme Court, Murphy and Gutierrez continued to fight for their client, and following another appeal she was entirely vindicated.

Gutierrez represented Mickey Bowie, identical twin brother of Carl Jonathan Bowie, a 19-year-old Columbia, Maryland teen found hanged May 4, 1990 on a baseball backstop at Columbia's Oakland Mills High School. Prior to his death, Carl Jonathan Bowie and Mickey Bowie stated that they had been harassed by police officers after filing brutality complaints against three officers. The brothers said that the officers used excessive force in arresting them at a party at the Red Roof Inn in Jessup, Maryland in January 1990, 5 months prior to Bowie's death and weeks before they were to face police in court.

Although the state medical examiner ruled the death of Carl Jonathan Bowie a suicide, many of his relatives and friends have disputed that finding and have suggested that his death was the result of foul play. Howard County police first ruled the death a suicide and later reclassified it as an unattended death. Subsequent investigations by the state police and a county grand jury found no evidence of foul play in the death but insufficient evidence of suicide. Gutierrez stated it is "extraordinarily improper for the State's Attorney's Office to declare that officers are 'magically cleared' of complicity in Bowie's death" and vowed to prove that the State's Attorney's Office acted improperly. Gutierrez involvement in the Bowie case is presented in the 2020 true crime book Losing Jon.