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Thread: Rodney Rodell Reed - Texas Death Row

  1. #101
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    Contrary to original trial, pathologist in Rodney Reed case says victim was not sexually assaulted

    BASTROP, TEXAS - During day two of a hearing to clear the name of a man on death row for a 1996 murder, a forensic pathologist who initially produced a report on the woman's death took the stand, along with Reed's original trial attorney.

    Rodney Reed is on death row for the murder of Stacey Stites. She was found dead on the side of a Bastrop County road in April 1996. Reed was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998. His execution dates have been pushed back several times.

    His defense has argued his original case included misleading testimony and evidence that has been called into question, including evidence that points to a separate suspect -- Jimmy Fennell -- who was Stites’ fiancé and a law enforcement officer at the time.

    Lydia Clay-Jackson, Reed's original trial attorney, testified during the hearing Wednesday saying she did not have a handle on the trial that ended with Reed's 1998 conviction.

    She said during the original trial, she argued to the jury Jimmy Fennell was a suspect.

    "I talked to the jury about that he was a suspect even though he was a member of law enforcement," said Clay-Jackson. She also testified Stites and Reed had a secret relationship.

    "It was a biracial affair in a community that was not at that time receptive to such a relationship," said Clay-Jackson.

    Clay-Jackson said she argued to the jury in the original trial that Fennell had motive to murder Stites.

    Michael Baden -- a forensic pathologist and former medical examiner for New York City and who formerly worked for the federal government to help investigate the deaths of Martin Luther King Jr. and President John F. Kennedy -- was also called to testify Wednesday.

    He testified saying Stites was dead before midnight on April 22, 1996. He also testified she was not sexually assaulted, contrary to testimony and evidence from the original trial.

    Baden also testified Stites was dead in the passenger seat of the truck, not the driver side.

    During the first day of the trial on Tuesday, Reed's defense brought in Curtis Davis as a witness. He was Fennell's best friend at the time and is a criminal investigator for the Bastrop County Sheriff's Office.

    Supporters and family of Reed have worn shirts at the trial that read, "Free Rodney Reed."

    http://www.kvue.com/news/local/as-ma...tand/482482880

  2. #102
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    Texas man on death row to learn if he gets new trial in up to 2 months

    BASTROP, Texas – After four days of a hearing for Rodney Reed -- a man on death row for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites -- the Court of Criminal Appeals will now decide whether he will get a new trial.

    Stites' body was found on the side of a Bastrop County road in April 1996. Reed was then convicted of murdering the 19-year-old and was sentenced to death in 1998. His defense has argued his original case included misleading testimony and evidence that has been called into question, including evidence that points to a separate suspect – Jimmy Fennell – who was Stites’ fiancé and a law enforcement officer at the time. Fennell is currently in jail on kidnapping and improper sexual conduct charges stemming from a different incident.

    The four-day hearing wrapped up after less than an hour Friday morning with Judge Doug Shafer saying he may need up to two months to give his recommendations to the Court of Criminal Appeals on what should happen.

    Reed was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to die, and his execution has been pushed back multiple times.

    Reed’s attorneys are questioning the whereabouts of Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennel, and spent part of Thursday focusing on the timeline of when Stites was killed.

    All week long, Reed's defense tried to prove that new evidence shows their client did not murder Stites in 1996, pointing instead to her fiancé -- Jimmy Fennell -- as the man who committed the crime.

    Fennell told police he was home at 8 p.m. with Stites the night before she was murdered, and based off expert analysis, that would clear him of the crime. In a recent interview with CNN, Curtis Davis -- a man who claims to be Fennell's good friend -- said Fennell told him he went out drinking that night before coming home around 10 p.m. This would change Fennell's timeline.

    In closing arguments Friday, Reed's defense said this is enough for a new trial, saying "those are two diametrically opposed statements. Which one is true? The one to Mr. Davis. How do we know that? Because he was confiding in his best friend and he didn't have anything to hide."

    The state argued differently.

    "Whether Jimmy Fennell arrived late or not has absolutely nothing to do with the physical condition of Stacey Stites body," said Matthew Ottoway.

    During Reed's original trial, medical expert testimony found that Reed's semen was found inside Stites' body.

    "We have proven today lies, deceit, cover up that the state has done," Reed's mother, Sandra Reed, said after the hearing. "These very people in power can destroy you, too."

    Reed's family said they're happy with the hearing and confident justice will be served.

    http://www.kvue.com/news/local/rodne...1013/483085851

  3. #103
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    Judge: Bastrop’s Rodney Reed, on death row, should not get new trial

    In a major setback for death row inmate Rodney Reed, a judge has recommended that the Bastrop man’s request for a new trial be denied by the state’s highest criminal court.

    Defense lawyers had argued that newly discovered evidence bolstered their theory that Stacey Stites was murdered in 1996 by her fiance, Jimmy Fennell, not Reed.

    They pointed to a 2016 TV interview given by Curtis Davis, who was good friends with Fennell and Stites, in which Davis recalled Fennell saying 20 years ago that he had gone out drinking and returned to the Giddings apartment he shared with Stites between 10 and 11 p.m. the night before she died.

    Fennell had told investigators that he returned to the apartment around 8 p.m. and was with Stites until she left for work around 3 a.m.

    During a four-day hearing in Bastrop in October, defense lawyers argued that Davis’ recollection, when combined with recently developed forensic evidence, refuted the prosecution theory that Reed killed Stites between 3 and 3:30 a.m. on April 23, 1996, as she drove to her job at a Bastrop grocery store. Instead, they argued, the evidence shows that Stites was killed before midnight, making Fennell the only likely suspect.

    Visiting Judge Doug Shaver, however, was unimpressed by the evidence in findings of fact that were dated Jan. 5 but filed Monday in court.

    Shaver noted that Davis testified during the October hearing that Fennell never provided a specific time of his return home and that Davis surmised it was after 10 p.m.

    Davis’ memory also proved to be unreliable several times during his testimony during the October hearing, the judge wrote.

    In contrast, Shaver said Carol Stites — the mother of Stacey Stites, who lived in the same apartment building as her daughter — credibly testified that Fennel had arrived home “right before dusk,” which would have been around 8 p.m.

    Shaver’s findings will be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will have the final say on whether Reed, 50, gets a new trial.

    Defense lawyer Bryce Benjet said late Monday that he remained hopeful that the appeals court would reject Shaver’s findings, which are advisory, after examining the new evidence.

    “We have now proven everything the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked us to show, and we look forward to presenting this substantial case to the court,” he said. “Over the past 20 years, the evidence of. Mr. Reed’s innocence continues to mount, and we are confident that he will ultimately be vindicated.”

    Defense lawyers used the controversy over Fennell’s 20-year-old statements to introduce testimony by Dr. Michael Baden, a renowned forensic pathologist who concluded that Stites had been killed before midnight, disputing conclusions that she had been strangled shortly after 3 a.m.

    Baden said evidence showed that Stites had been dead for several hours before she was driven to Bastrop in the passenger seat of a pickup that was found several miles from where her body had been left by the side of a rural road.

    There was a mucus-like substance found on the passenger side floorboard — discharge from the nose and mouth that is related to decomposition and takes three to four hours to develop, Baden said. In addition, crime scene photos and videotape revealed blood had pooled in the front of Stites’ body — “fixed lividity” that shows Stites had lain face down for at least five hours before her body was left on a rural roadside in an upright position, he said.

    Benjet argued that the forensic evidence and Davis’ conversation with Fennell introduced enough uncertainty to order a new trial for Reed.

    But in his findings, Shaver said defense lawyers failed to show that Baden’s testimony could have swayed jurors at Reed’s trial.

    “Baden’s opinions … would not have affected the outcome of trial because they simply present an alternative explanation that the jury could have rejected, the evidence of (Reed’s) guilt was strong, and (defense lawyers) presented no credible evidence of a consensual relationship between he and Stites, which would have been needed to explain why his semen and saliva were found on a dead woman,” Shaver wrote.

    Fennell, who is serving a 10-year prison term for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman in his custody as a Georgetown police officer in 2007, declined to testify during the October hearing, but his lawyer said Fennell continues to maintain his innocence in Stites’ murder.

    http://www.statesman.com/news/judge-...QBImsiFTj5RHM/
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  4. #104
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    This case really annoys me. The way Reed's supporters carry on you'd have thought that this theory that Fennell did it is something that only emerged over the years.

    Urm, no, it's very clear from the original trial transcripts that this was the very first theory investigated, as you'd expect it to be. When someone gets murdered, their partner will be an early suspect. Probably not a strong one, but an early one.

    Reed on the other hand never came onto the investigation's radar until a chance DNA hit. Reed wasn't picked up because one of her friends mentioned a black guy who looked like Reed and his DNA happened to match, the expanding net simply never reached him. They were having an affair but no one has suggested where they met? This was 1996, they didn't meet on Facebook or some sort of extramarital affairs website and even if they did that would create a footprint! People hire private detectives to catch their partners having affairs, it's not exactly difficult to confirm this.

    Yeah, Fennell does seem to have some issues with his attitude towards women. But it's not exactly like Reed has no history of rape. Or indeed a pattern of denying knowing the victim then claiming they were having an affair.

    Yeah, I get that the defence are acting in their best interests of their client, but his supporters are stone deaf sticking their fingers in their ears saying lalalalala.

  5. #105
    Senior Member CnCP Addict one_two_bomb's Avatar
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    Once his appeals are exhausted this is gonna be another larry swearingen all over again. Im sure he will be executed eventually though

  6. #106
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    Rodney Reed asks Supreme Court to grant DNA tests on evidence

    By Chuck Lindell
    The Austin American-Statesman

    With dwindling opportunities to avoid execution, death row inmate Rodney Reed of Bastrop has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow DNA testing on crime scene evidence that defense lawyers argue could establish his innocence.

    Defense lawyers argued that the state’s highest criminal court, which denied Reed’s request for additional DNA testing in April, unfairly and unreasonably interpreted the state’s DNA testing law to create a hurdle that is impossible for Reed and many other inmates to meet.

    “DNA testing in Texas remains largely unavailable (to inmates) due to unduly restrictive judicial interpretations” by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Reed’s lawyers told the high court in a petition filed Thursday afternoon.

    Reed was sentenced to death in the 1996 strangulation murder of Stacey Stites, whose body was found along a rural Bastrop County road after she failed to show up for her early-morning shift at a Bastrop grocery store.

    Reed’s lawyers are seeking DNA tests on any crime-scene evidence that was likely touched by the killer — including Stites’ clothing, two pieces of the belt used to strangle her and her name tag, which was left atop her body — in hope that modern testing methods can discover skin cells and other DNA-bearing evidence that had been left behind.

    The belt, they argued, had never been tested “despite the obvious evidentiary value of such test results.”

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied the DNA tests, ruling that problems with the chain of custody of the evidence raised serious doubts about the reliability of future testing because of cross contamination. The items Reed wants tested had been handled during Reed’s trial and, in some instances, were stored in the same container afterward, the court said in an 8-0 ruling.

    Reed’s lawyers argued that the Texas court created a legal standard that does not exist in Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the state law that gives inmates access to DNA testing that wasn’t previously available or performed before trial.

    Under that law, inmates are only required to show that the chain of custody was sufficient to establish that that the evidence “has not been substituted, tampered with, replaced or altered in any material respect,” they told the Supreme Court.

    “The (Texas court) read a possible contamination element into Chapter 64’s chain of custody element where none exists in the statute,” defense lawyers said.

    The result is a fundamentally unfair standard by placing “an impossible burden on a convicted person with respect to evidence over which he or she has no control,” they argued.

    Reed first sought to test many of the items in 1999 but was denied. He renewed the request in 2014 after the law on Chapter 64 testing took effect, the lawyers said.

    Reed’s Supreme Court petition also accused the Court of Criminal Appeals of applying a double standard — denying Reed’s request for testing based on possible contamination while routinely allowing prosecutors to introduce DNA evidence at trial despite contamination risks.

    Reed’s Supreme Court appeal is separate from another appeal that is pending before the Court of Criminal Appeals. In that case, Reed is seeking another trial, arguing that newly discovered evidence bolstered the defense theory that Stites had been murdered by her fiance, Jimmy Fennell.

    Last month, however, visiting Judge Doug Shaver recommended that the appeals court deny Reed’s request, saying his review found the evidence to be unpersuasive.

    http://www.statesman.com/news/rodney...M7EJIEDY7f8JL/
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  7. #107
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Reed's petition for a writ of certiorari was DENIED.
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  8. #108
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    Article

    Supreme Court rejects Texas death row inmate's appeal

    HOUSTON (AP) - The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to review a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling refusing DNA testing of additional evidence in the lengthy case of a man condemned for the rape-slaying of a Central Texas woman.

    Attorneys for 50-year-old prisoner Rodney Reed sought the new testing on items investigators collected related to the 1996 abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacy Stites.

    Her body was found off the side of a road about 35 miles southeast of Austin.

    The high court's refusal, without comment Monday, upholds the Texas court's April 2017 decision that also said Reed's lawyers were intending to "unreasonably delay" his execution.

    Reed, who has maintained his innocence, was arrested nearly a year after Stites' killing when his DNA surfaced in an unrelated sexual assault.

    http://www.kwtx.com/content/news/Sup...486475831.html
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  9. #109
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    Rodney Reed files new appeal, says scientific opinions were false

    By David Barer
    KXAN News

    AUSTIN (KXAN) -- Death row inmate Rodney Reed has filed a new appeal in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asserting scientific expert opinions the state used at his Bastrop trial were false and have since been changed.

    The new appeal, which supplements a pending habeas corpus proceeding, comes one day after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected Reed’s petition for further DNA testing of crime scene evidence.

    Reed sits on death row. He has maintained his innocence since being convicted of the 1996 murder and sexual assault of 21-year-old Stacey Stites. Stites was found strangled and partially clothed alongside a rural Bastrop road. Reed’s defense says her former fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, is the killer.

    Since his conviction, Reed’s defense has used outside forensic experts to show the state used faulty evidence at trial. The defense says it has undermined the state’s time-of-death estimate and evidence of a sexual assault, among other issues, according to the appeal.

    “The Texas Department of Public Safety (who employed the State’s expert Karen Blakely), The Bode Cellmark Forensics Laboratory (who employed the State’s retained expert Meghan Clement), and the State’s forensic pathologist Dr. Roberto Bayardo, have all now acknowledged that the scientific opinions offered by the state to tie Mr. Reed to the murder were in error,” according to the latest appeal. “Because these erroneous expert testimonies were central to the state’s case against Mr. Reed, he is entitled to relief.”

    The state has maintained its position that Reed is guilty and it has worked to block every attempt by the defense to obtain a new trial.

    Reed’s attorney, Bryce Benjet, said the ultimate outcome of the appeal could be a new trial. In the short term, the Court of Criminal Appeals could remand the case back to Bastrop District Court for further proceedings. It is not clear when the Court of Criminal Appeals will make a decision. The last remand took about two years, Benjet wrote in an email.

    https://www.kxan.com/news/crime/rodn...lse/1265926253
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  10. #110
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed hospitalized

    By Claire Ricke
    Spectrum News

    GALVESTON, Texas – A Texas man on death row has been hospitalized in Galveston.

    Rodney Reed, 50, was admitted to Hospital Galveston on Aug. 21 for an unknown reason.

    Reed was convicted of abducting, raping and strangling 19-year-old Stacy Stites in 1996. Her body was found on the side of the road 35 miles southeast of Austin.

    The U.S. Supreme Court refused to review an appeal to test additional DNA evidence in the case over the summer. Along with his attorneys, Reed argued in June that a new trial should be granted on the grounds of newly-discovered evidence.

    The Texas courts upheld Reed's conviction of capital murder and sentenced him to death. Over the following two decades numerous protests have claimed Reed is innocent. According to Reed, Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, is guilty of her murder.

    http://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/aust...d-hospitalized
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