(Credit: Associated Press)
On Thursday, August 8, 2019, lawyers for Death Row inmate Rodney Reed filed a federal civil rights suit against the State of Texas. The filing comes after yet another request for DNA testing in his 1998 conviction for the murder of Stacy Stites was recently denied. It also comes on the heels of the Bastrop County District Attorney’s request to schedule Reed’s execution date for November 20, 2019.
According to his attorneys, the denial of such testing effectively violates his constitutional rights.
“If this case were investigated today, the murder weapon would unquestionably have been tested, and could provide evidence of Mr. Reed’s innocence. Instead, his fundamental right to due process has been violated and an execution date has been set. It simply makes no sense that the state would attempt to execute a person without conducting this basic forensic investigation,” said Bryce Benjet, Reed’s lawyer and senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
Reed’s request for DNA testing was filed five years ago and was denied after lengthy proceedings—including two appeals to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Last summer, the United States Supreme Court declined to directly review the denial of DNA testing by the Texas courts.
“In the 20 years since Mr. Reed’s trial, there is substantial evidence that both exonerates Reed and implicates Stites’s fiancé, Jimmy Fennell. New witnesses have come forward, including Stites’s cousin, who was aware that Reed and Stites were romantically involved,” a release from the Innocence Project states. “Fennell’s best friend at the time, Bastrop Sheriff’s Officer Curtis Davis has now revealed that Fennell gave an inconsistent account of where he was on the night of the murder. Fennell, who was recently released after serving a 10-year prison term for a sex crime, had told his friend he had been out drinking on the night Stites was murdered. He later claimed he was with Stites in their apartment during the time that we now know was the actual time of her death, based on Dr. Baden’s updated testimony. When asked to explain this discrepancy, Fennell declined to testify because his answers might further incriminate him.”
