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Thread: Rodney Rodell Reed - Texas Death Row

  1. #241
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    If he gets released there is no doubt that he will rape and/or kill again. It won’t be in Texas though. He’ll either move to a state that doesn’t have the death penalty or leave the country and go somewhere like Norway
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  2. #242
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Rejecting claims of innocence, judge says Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed should not get a new trial

    BASTROP — More than two decades after Rodney Reed was sentenced to death for the murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, doubts about his guilt and the role race might have played in his 1998 conviction continue to haunt this Central Texas town.

    On Monday, a judge appointed to reexamine the case slammed the door on Reed’s best chance to avoid execution, releasing his findings that newly presented evidence is not enough to grant Reed a new trial.

    The ruling by retired state District Judge J.D. Langley is a dramatic setback for efforts to win Reed’s freedom in a case that has spawned international attention and outrage, often cited by Reed’s supporters as an example of a Black man railroaded by an American criminal justice system.

    Langley’s recommendation, issued two weeks after he heard attorneys’ final arguments at the Bastrop County courthouse, now goes to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which has the final say in the matter.

    It is an explosive turn after nearly a quarter-century of court battles over the 1996 Bastrop County killing. Reed, now 53, and his supporters have long proclaimed his innocence, pointing blame at Stites’ fiance, Jimmy Fennell. Stites’ family and state attorneys remain convinced of Reed’s guilt.

    Reed, a Black man, was found guilty of murdering Stites, a white woman, and sentenced to death by an all-white jury. Fennell, a white man, is a former Giddings police officer.

    "The Court of Criminal Appeals has repeatedly considered [Reed's] allegations of innocence ... and found them wanting," Langley wrote in his findings.

    Langley’s rejection of a new trial comes nearly two years after Reed’s impending execution was halted among deafening calls for further review of his conviction from a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers, numerous A-list celebrities and millions of people who signed online petitions. After years of appeals, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, ordered the trial court in 2019 to weigh whether Reed is innocent of Stites’ murder.

    But the high court can still rule against Langley and grant Reed a new trial. It’s unclear when the court will make a decision.

    Reed’s family was hopeful that, after spending more than 23 years on death row, Reed might finally win a new trial, his brother said last month. Langley presided over a nearly two-week hearing this summer to review claims of Reed’s innocence, and examine whether Bastrop County prosecutors withheld evidence or put false evidence before jurors.

    “That’s all we ask for is a fair trial,” Rodrick Reed said outside of a Bastrop County courtroom after Langley heard closing arguments in the case. “My brother never had that from the beginning. It was a Jim Crow trial straight out of the gate.”

    Reed’s attorneys said Monday that they look forward to presenting Reed’s case to Texas’ high criminal court.

    “If a new jury heard the overwhelming evidence of Rodney Reed’s innocence, it would have reasonable doubts. Convicted by an all-white jury, Mr. Reed has spent 23 years on death row for a crime he did not commit,” said Jane Pucher with the Innocence Project. “We hope the Court of Criminal Appeals recognizes that he should be given a new trial.”

    The two decades since Rodney Reed’s conviction have seen a simmering mix of emotion, uncertainty and accusations of racism as his appeals have wound their way through the courts.

    Stites was engaged to Fennell, but Reed said he and Stites were also romantically involved.

    Both Reed and Fennell have been accused of other sexual assaults. Reed was indicted, but never convicted, in several other rape cases months before his trial in Stites’ death began in 1998. Fennell spent 10 years in prison after he kidnapped and allegedly raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in 2007.

    In his 50-page ruling, Langley sided with the state’s arguments that Fennell was a credible witness, giving weight to his description of Stites leaving their apartment to go to work the morning before she was found dead. Langley also credited Fennell and family members as depicting the couple’s relationship as happy and that both were excited about their upcoming wedding. Langley discounted the 17 witnesses brought forward by Reed who said either Stites and Reed were at least friendly before her murder, or that Fennell had acted suspiciously after the murder or was violent and controlling toward Stites.

    The judge discounted Reed’s witnesses in part, he said, because they “waited decades to bring forth ... ‘recollection.’” Andrew MacRae, one of Reed’s attorneys, however, argued to Langley in October that the witnesses didn’t purposefully wait to speak but were simply never sought out by investigators.

    “These people didn’t come forward, we found them,” he countered during his closing arguments.

    On April 23, 1996, Stites’ body was found by the side of a rural Bastrop County road, partially unclothed, hours after she missed her shift at a local grocery store, according to court records. Fennell’s truck was found abandoned in a nearby school parking lot. Pieces of Stites’ belt, which is believed to have been used to strangle her, were found at both locations.

    Initially, Fennell, a local police officer, was a suspect, found to be deceptive on two polygraph tests when questioned in the killing. But he was cleared after investigators couldn’t account for how he could have gotten back without his truck to the couple’s apartment in the nearby town of Giddings by the time Stites was reported missing, court records state. Fennell told police Stites had taken his truck in the early morning to go to work. When Stites’ mother, who lived in a nearby apartment unit, called to tell him Stites’ coworker had reported she never showed up, Fennell was home.

    Reed’s lawyers have argued that Fennell was never properly investigated. Police relied too heavily on his claim that Stites had left for work alive, they said, using that to estimate her time of death without ever searching the couple’s apartment to see if there had been any signs of a struggle. And investigators were late to interview Fennell or the couple’s neighbors, Reed’s attorneys told the court this month. The man who lived directly below the couple told a Giddings-area law enforcement official after the murder that the couple often fought. He was never interviewed by Bastrop investigators, Reed’s attorneys said.

    Semen found in Stites’ body led police to believe she was sexually assaulted before being murdered. Nearly a year after her death, sperm cells from Stites’ body were found to match Reed, which prosecutors called the “smoking gun” of the crime. Prosecutors have since argued that Reed stopped Stites while she was driving to work, then sexually assaulted and killed her.

    “The truth is, your honor, that Rodney Reed kidnapped, brutally raped and violently murdered Stacey Stites,” Travis Bragg, an assistant Texas attorney general, told Langley last month.

    Reed counters that he and Stites were in a casual relationship and had consensual sex the day before her disappearance. Stites’ relatives deny the two knew each other before her death. Numerous people who knew Stites have said since Reed’s conviction that they saw the two together.

    In the decades since the murder, forensic experts have changed their statements on what the presence of sperm means. At Reed’s trial, experts testified that Stites was sexually assaulted just before her death, and that the sperm cells would have been unlikely to remain in Stites’ body for more than 24 hours. The medical examiner and other experts have since said there was no evidence the sperm matching Reed was a result of sexual assault, and it could have remained in Stites’ body for more than a day after consensual sex.

    Reed’s attorneys also argue that forensic examination, like the stiffness of her body and pooling of her blood, makes it more likely Stites died before the time when Fennell said she left for work, despite her being in her work clothes. With their own experts knocking down the finding of rape and presuming a time of death when Fennell said he was alone with Stites, Reed’s attorneys say his innocence claim is strong.

    “Without [forensic evidence], the only thing the state has is the word of Jimmy Fennell,” Pucher said in court.

    Langley sided with state forensic experts, however, who argued Stites could have been sexually assaulted, and gave credence to the time of death provided based on Fennell’s testimony of her leaving for work, in part because Stites’ body was found in her work clothes.

    As the years have gone by, defense attorneys have found numerous witnesses to bolster Reed’s claim that he and Stites had an affair, and point more suspicion on Fennell. Several people, including some of Stites’ co-workers, said they had seen Stites and Reed together previously. Some, Reed’s attorneys argue, told law enforcement at the time of the murder about seeing Reed and Stites together, but such evidence was never investigated or provided to defense attorneys.

    Other people have since told attorneys that Fennell and Stites’ relationship was troubled. A fellow police officer said she heard Fennell say that he would strangle Stites with a belt if he ever found out she cheated on him. A former sheriff’s deputy said he heard Fennell tell Stites’ body at her funeral that she deserved what she got. And another deputy from a different county said Fennell told him before the murder that he believed Stites was having sex with a Black man. A man who was in prison with Fennell after the 2007 kidnapping and rape case told attorneys that Fennell confessed to him that he killed Stites.

    To Stites’ family, the prosecution and Langley, the newly discovered witnesses are not credible. State attorneys had a memory expert testify that people can falsely remember things because of media influence. They hope Reed’s conviction will be upheld and the appeals will end, pointing to his sperm in Stites’ body and his indictments in four other suspected or attempted rapes in Bastrop County — two near the same time and place the state said Stites was killed.

    “Rodney Reed is a serial rapist and a murderer,” said Debra Oliver, Stites’ older sister, outside the courtroom last month. “Texas needs to finally have justice prevail, and enough is enough. We’ve been dealing with this for 25 years.”

    But for Reed and his attorneys, without forensic evidence proving Stites was raped and died after she left for work, the witnesses who have since been discovered by investigative attorneys are more credible than Fennell. During the hearing before Langley, MacRae scoffed at the prosecution and Fennell for discounting the many witnesses as lying or misremembering, yet insisting that Fennell is truthful.

    “People who have no axe to grind and who corroborate each other: not credible,” MacRae said, impersonating the prosecution’s arguments. “A convicted rapist and kidnapper who stands to go to prison for the rest of his life if Rodney Reed is acquitted and who says everyone else is lying: he’s credible.”

    https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11...death-penalty/
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  3. #243
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Prosecutors oppose Rodney Reed’s petition seeking US Supreme Court review of DNA testing claim

    Rodney Reed’s defense team has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the dismissal of a 2019 civil rights lawsuit seeking post-conviction DNA testing of crime scene evidence in his death-row case. State prosecutors submitted their response to the high court Wednesday and said Reed’s petition should be denied.

    Reed has long sought DNA testing on evidence including a belt believed to be the murder weapon that was never tested. The current U.S. Supreme Court petition is another attempt to ultimately get further DNA testing approved.

    The petition arose from a lawsuit filed by Reed in U.S. District Court in August 2019. That lawsuit alleged the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals misinterpreted Texas law that allows for post-conviction DNA testing and violated Reed’s civil rights.

    U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin dismissed the 2019 lawsuit. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Yeakel’s dismissal. The 5th Circuit ruled Reed’s lawsuit was filed too late, which is the basis of Reed’s current Supreme Court petition for writ of certiorari filed in September.

    Reed’s attorneys say the case presents an “exceptionally important issue that has divided the courts of appeal,” according to the petition. In 1998, Reed was convicted and sentenced to death in Bastrop for the rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites.

    State prosecutors argue the statute of limitations expired to make a claim for post-conviction DNA testing of crime scene evidence, according to a response submitted Wednesday afternoon. Prosecutors also pointed out Reed has filed numerous applications in state court and none have been successful so far.

    “Over the last 25 years, multiple courts have admonished Reed for his abuse of the judicial process,” prosecutors said in their response. “This suit is another in a long line of dilatory litigation tactics.”

    Prosecutors assert Reed’s petition has “jurisdictional defects” and should not have been filed against Bastrop District Attorney Bryan Goertz, who should have sovereign immunity in this instance. And, “on the merits, Reed’s claims fare no better,” the state’s attorneys added.

    Reed’s defense team says previous rulings from two separate US appeals courts have created conflicting timeframes for when the clock should begin on the 2-year statute of limitations for a civil rights claim, such as Reed’s, for post-conviction DNA testing.

    Reed wants the Supreme Court to hear the case and find that his 2019 lawsuit was filed on time.

    Conflicting circuit courts


    Reed’s defense said the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held that the two-year statute of limitations for this type of civil rights claim begins running at the end of state court litigation denying DNA testing, including any appeals. Alternatively, the 5th Circuit, which ruled on Reed’s case, has a timeframe that begins sooner. The 5th Circuit – joining with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals – held that the statute of limitations began running as soon as the state trial court denied DNA testing, despite an appeal, according to Reed’s petition.

    With its earlier timeframe, the 5th Circuit ruled Reed had run out of time to file the 2019 civil rights lawsuit seeking more DNA testing, according to Reed’s filing.

    “The stakes could not be higher,” Reed’s attorneys argue in the petition. “Had Mr. Reed brought his claims in the 11th Circuit, the court would have proceeded to the weighty question whether the Constitution entitles him to testing that could prove his innocence.”

    Prosecutors argued the 5th Circuit’s decision was correct. Furthermore, few similar cases have arisen over the past 20 years and the split Reed references between the circuit courts is not “recurring.”
    “6 circuit cases over the last 2 decades does not demonstrate a recurring issue,” the state argues.

    Decisions to come

    The Supreme Court could deny the petition and refuse to hear the case. However, the Supreme Court does hear cases to resolve splits between federal appeals courts. Reed argues that such a split exists on this issue. If the Supreme Court hears the case, it could side with the 5th and 7th Circuit Courts and deny Reed’s claim, or the court could rule in Reed’s favor by siding with 11th Circuit Court.

    Reed has been represented for years by the Innocence Project, and his legal team has filed numerous applications for relief at every level of the state and federal court system.

    Reed currently has separate matters pending in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals where he filed a writ of habeas corpus, which is a request for the court to consider if a person’s detention is lawful, and a successor petition indicating there has been newly discovered evidence in the case.

    Those filings were made in mid-December. The Court of Criminal Appeals is also considering evidence and testimony gathered over the summer during a two-week evidentiary hearing in Bastrop. The Court of Criminal Appeals could opt to give Reed a new trial or let his conviction stand. It is not clear when it will make a decision.

    (source: KXAN news)
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  4. #244
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Petition for writ of certiorari distributed for conference February 18, 2022.

    Lower Court: Fifth Circuit

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....ic/21-442.html
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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  5. #245
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    Petition for certiorari GRANTED.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
    Case Numbers: (19-70022)
    Decision Date: April 22, 2021

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/search....ic/21-442.html

  6. #246
    Senior Member CnCP Addict maybeacomedian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bobsicles View Post
    If he gets released there is no doubt that he will rape and/or kill again. It won’t be in Texas though. He’ll either move to a state that doesn’t have the death penalty or leave the country and go somewhere like Norway
    I agree. Probably New York or Illinois.

  7. #247
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mastro Titta's Avatar
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    Oral arguments in Rodney Reed's last SCOTUS petition are scheduled for October 11th, 2022.

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_ar...ctober2022.pdf

  8. #248
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Supreme Court hears death row inmate Rodney Reed’s appeal for new DNA testing

    By Ariane de Vogue
    CNN

    The Supreme Court struggled with the case of Rodney Reed on Tuesday, a Black death row inmate seeking post-conviction DNA evidence to prove his innocence. He claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing a White woman in Texas in 1998.

    Since his conviction, Texas courts have rejected his various appeals. Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed support, signing a petition asking the state to halt his execution.

    At oral arguments, a lawyer for the state suggested Reed was making his arguments in order to delay his execution, but it was unclear if the lawyer swayed all of the conservative justices. The state warned against inmates being able to “avail themselves” of “endless procedure in state courts.”

    The case puts a new focus on the testing of DNA crime-scene evidence and when an inmate can make a claim to access the technology in a plea of innocence. To date, 375 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 21 who served time on death row, according to the Innocence Project, a group that represents Reed and other clients seeking post-conviction DNA testing to prove their innocence.

    Justice Elena Kagan seemed to agree with Reed’s attorney, saying it was important for the full appeals process to play out before an inmate asked a federal court to intervene.

    “Isn’t the simplest thing just to say that the person isn’t harmed until the state process has come to an end and we know for a fact what the state judgment is?” she asked.

    Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also agreed, noting that if an inmate were to bring the challenge before the state proceedings were over, a federal court would likely move to put the appeal on hold until the state action concludes.

    But Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern at one point for inmates seeking to avoid an immediate appeal as a way to “put off” an execution.

    For his part, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was interested in the “practical problems” courts would face if an inmate had to bring a federal court challenge before the state procedures were exhausted.

    Court precedent allows a state prisoner who has been denied in state court to pursue a post-conviction claim for DNA testing in federal court. But Reed’s case raises a statute of limitations question about whether such a claim can be brought at the end of state court litigation or at the moment a trial court denied DNA testing.

    Lower courts have split on the issue and the distinction is key for Reed as a federal appeals court ruled that he waited too long to bring his claim. How the Supreme Court rules could impact other death row inmates across the country seeking to test new evidence. And comes as DNA testing has become a more utilized means to exonerate those who have been wrongly convicted.

    Reed has been on death row for the murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites.

    A passerby found Stites’ body near a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators targeted Reed because his sperm was found inside her. Reed acknowledged the two were having an affair, but says that her fiancé, a local police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the last to see her alive.

    Reed claims that over the last two decades he has discovered a “considerable body of evidence” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would point to Fennell as the murder suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody and Reed claims that numerous witnesses said he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her cheating on him. Reed seeks to test the belt found at the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

    The Texas law at issue allows a convicted person to obtain post-conviction DNA testing of biological material if the court finds that certain conditions are met. Reed was denied. He came to the Supreme Court in 2018 and was denied again. Now he is challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due process rights.

    But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals held that he waited too long to bring the claim. “An injury accrues when a plaintiff first becomes aware, or should have become aware, that his right had been violated.” The court said that he became aware of that in 2014 and that his current claim is “time barred.”

    Reed’s lawyers argued that he could only bring the claim once the state appeals court had ruled, at the end of state court litigation. In court, Parker Rider-Longmaid said that the “clock doesn’t start ticking” until state court proceedings come to an end. He said Texas’ reading of the law would mean that other procedures in the appellate process are “irrelevant.”

    Janai Nelson of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund supports Reed arguing in briefs that the “overwhelming majority of incarcerated persons exonerated through DNA evidence since its introduction in 1989, have been people of color and primarily Black men.”

    Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone II responded in court papers that at trial the state introduced “substantial” evidence that Reed had “sexually assaulted multiple other women.” Besides arguing that the suit is untimely, he also says that Reed’s claim cannot be brought because he lacks the legal right, or “standing,” to bring the case.

    https://ktvz.com/politics/cnn-us-pol...w-dna-testing/
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  9. #249
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Petition for certiorari GRANTED. Judgment was reversed and remanded to the Fifth CCA.

    Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
    Case Numbers: (19-70022)
    Decided April 19, 2023

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinion...1-442_e1p3.pdf
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Habeas corpus relief denied in part and dismissed in part.

    https://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMe...a-2bb78c4e4268

    Stay of execution is now lifted.

    A second application for writ of habeas corpus was also dismissed.

    https://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMe...9-b430a4862ffc
    Last edited by Julius; 06-28-2023 at 10:03 AM.

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