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  1. #1
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    Rodney Rodell Reed - Texas Death Row


    Stacey Stites




    Summary of Offense:

    On April 23, 1996, Reed strangled and killed Stacy Stites, 19, during an aggravated sexual assault. Reed was identified by DNA taken from the crime scene.

    Reed was sentenced to death in Bastrop County in May 1998.

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    December 6, 2007

    There are renewed calls to grant a Texas death row inmate a new trial in connection with the murder of Stacy Stites in Bastrop 11 years ago.

    This comes after a former suspect in her murder - her fiancé, who is a police officer - was charged with three felonies on unrelated charges Tuesday.

    Georgetown Police Sgt. Jimmy Fennell, 35, is accused of sexually assaulting a woman at gunpoint while he was on duty.

    Fennell was Stites' fiancé at the time of her murder. He was an officer in Giddings when Stites was found strangled in 1996.

    Rodney Reed has been on death row since 1998 after he was convicted of the crime. His family believes in his innocence and says Fennell's indictment this week will help their case.

    "They didn't find him guilty. They said he was guilty. That's two different things," Rodney's father Walter Reed said.

    Reed's supporters and death penalty opponents believe Fennell's legal troubles have strong implications in this case.

    "He had a very shabby trial originally. And then there was some follow-up testimony afterward that the Court of Criminal Appeals discounted. And I think with the indictment in Williamson County that this should open up the whole case again and people ought to start over," Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project said.

    New evidence in Reed's case surfaced last year when a witness testified she saw Fennell and Stites together the morning before her death. Martha Barnett's testimony contradicted some of the information attorneys were working with when Reed was convicted in 1998.

    But a Bastrop County judge said that evidence wasn't enough to warrant a new trial.

    Harrington pointed out Wednesday that Fennell's testimony played a role in Reed's conviction. And in light of Fennell's indictments, Reed should be given a new trial.

    Reed's supporters from the Campaign to End the Death Penalty say Fennell's legal troubles could help Reed as well.

    Reed will plead his case before the Court of Criminal Appeals in the next few weeks.

    The Bastrop District Attorney was not available for comment on Wednesday.

    (Source: The Associated Press)

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    May 6, 2008

    AUSTIN – Jurors sentenced Rodney Reed to death after DNA evidence showed he'd had sex with 19-year-old Stacy Stites, found strangled in the brush off a remote country road.

    But a decade since Mr. Reed, who is black, first proclaimed his innocence, the case that rocked the small Central Texas town of Bastrop remains on appeal – amplified by an online movement to free Mr. Reed and continued scrutiny of Texas' use of the death penalty in racially charged cases.

    While Mr. Reed sits on death row, his attorneys are standing by his theory: that he was having a secret, interracial affair with Ms. Stites and that Ms. Stites' police officer fiancé found out and killed her.

    And they're arguing that Mr. Reed's trial was botched from the get-go – from sloppy police work and lack of legal counsel to a dearth of evidence linking Mr. Reed to the murder. No blacks were chosen for Mr. Reed's jury.

    "From all outward appearances, there is certainly tremendous doubt about Rodney's guilt," said Jim Marcus, a University of Texas law professor who has represented death row clients at the state and federal level but is not involved in Mr. Reed's defense. "At the very least, there is no question vital information that should've been before the jury was not."

    Mr. Reed's attorneys know they face an uphill battle. Courts maintained his conviction before, and state prosecutors say nothing has changed.

    "They've got the right man," said Debra Oliver, Ms. Stites' sister. "Every time we go through this, we have to relive her murder. I absolutely believe Rodney Reed is the man who did this." Mr. Reed declined to be interviewed for this story.

    Not found with pickup

    Investigators started searching for Ms. Stites on the morning of April 23, 1996, after she failed to show up for an early shift at the Bastrop H-E-B grocery. The red pickup her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell Jr., said she'd taken to work was recovered at the high school, but Ms. Stites' body was found in a remote, wooded area. She was half dressed and appeared to have been strangled with her own belt.

    Mr. Fennell, who was set to marry Ms. Stites in three weeks, was initially a suspect – but apparently not a serious one. The pickup was returned to him promptly after the murder, defense attorneys say, before forensic testing on it was finished. Mr. Fennell sold the truck a day later. And investigators never got a search warrant for the apartment Mr. Fennell – then a Giddings police officer – and Ms. Stites shared, even though it was the last place she'd been seen alive.

    A year after the murder, investigators matched the semen found in Ms. Stites' body to Mr. Reed, then 29, whose DNA was already on file over a previous sexual assault charge. Prosecutors charged him with Ms. Stites' murder, alleging he'd stopped Ms. Stites on her way to work, raped, strangled and sodomized her, then dumped her body before leaving the truck at the high school.

    Mr. Reed had been accused of rape several times in the past – though the one time he was charged and tried, he was acquitted. The other accusers were women he knew or had dated in the past.

    Defense attorneys called the state's case an unlikely stretch. None of Mr. Reed's hair or footprints were found on or near Ms. Stites' body. There was no indication of how Mr. Reed, allegedly on foot and without a weapon, had stopped Ms. Stites in her car. A search of the red pickup found only Mr. Fennell's and Ms. Stites' fingerprints, though Mr. Reed was the one who had allegedly abandoned the car at the high school.

    "The state's theory that whoever had sex with [Ms. Stites] killed her was flawed from the very beginning," said Reed attorney Morris Overstreet, who went before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals this month to request a new trial.

    Prosecutors believed the semen would be enough for a Bastrop County jury. It was – along with the fact that Mr. Reed's own story changed.

    At the time he was questioned about Ms. Stites, Mr. Reed was in jail for an unrelated cocaine charge, and he denied knowing her. When the DNA evidence against him was revealed, he told investigators that he'd been having an affair with Ms. Stites and that he'd had sex with her the day before the murder. He said they kept it a secret because of Mr. Fennell's position with the police department and because they feared racial discrimination over the relationship in their small town.

    At Mr. Reed's trial, a state expert testified that the semen collected by investigators had to have been planted in Ms. Stites' body that morning – not the night before. Since the trial, forensics specialists retained by the defense have argued that's not necessarily the case.

    Relationship witnesses

    The purported relationship was never fully fleshed out in his trial. Mr. Reed's camp says it's because his original attorneys didn't do their job; they say they've now got affidavits from nine witnesses who can vouch for the relationship.

    "They railroaded my son," said Mr. Reed's mother, Sandra. "I knew Stacy. She came to our house. I know my son is innocent."

    But prosecutors say the affair theory is outlandish. They say the witnesses, many of whom are family members or have criminal records, aren't trustworthy and have changed their stories.

    "There is no credible evidence the relationship ever existed, no reliable witness testimony," said Assistant Attorney General Tina Miranda. "To claim something has been excluded is absolutely ridiculous."

    Mr. Reed's attorneys also note that the trial never touched on beer cans found near Ms. Stites' body. Repeated DNA tests on saliva found on the cans ruled out Mr. Reed. But they couldn't rule out another local police officer – a close friend and neighbor of Mr. Fennell's.

    Mr. Reed's attorneys say the beer cans never came up in court because prosecutors didn't turn the DNA report over to them before trial. State attorneys vehemently deny they withheld the report; Jerry Strickland, a spokesman for Attorney General Greg Abbott, said that in 2001, a court concluded that the state provided the lab reports to the defense attorney.

    The attorney general's office helped Bastrop County prosecutors with the trial.

    Ryan Polomski, a filmmaker whose graduate thesis on the Reed case evolved into an award-winning documentary, said there are enough questions about the trial to give pause.

    "Am I 100 percent sure Reed didn't do it? No," he said "But I am 100 percent sure he didn't get a fair trial."

    Now, two additional witnesses have also joined the defense roster. One woman has testified she saw Ms. Stites and Mr. Fennell arguing outside a convenience store hours after Mr. Reed was alleged to have killed her. Another, a Dallas-area police officer, was in a police academy class with Mr. Fennell and said she heard him say he would strangle his girlfriend with a belt if he ever found she had cheated on him.

    State attorneys call these claims far-fetched; they say that the convenience store witness didn't come forward until after Mr. Fennell arrested her for drunken driving and that no other police officers in Mr. Fennell's academy class recall hearing the belt comment.

    "My client has been long ago vindicated by a jury and various appellate courts of any involvement in the Stacy Stites killing," said Bob Phillips, Mr. Fennell's criminal defense attorney. The insinuation that Mr. Fennell was involved "would be laughable if it weren't so outrageously unfair."

    But recent charges against Mr. Fennell are adding fuel to the fire for those who believe he could've played a role in Ms. Stites' killing. Last year, he was indicted for allegedly kidnapping and raping a woman in his custody while on a domestic disturbance call for the Georgetown Police Department. Mr. Fennell has resigned from the department while he awaits trial.

    "I'm not going to try our case in the press," said Mr. Phillips. "My client feels innocent because he is innocent."

    (Source: The Houston Chronicle)

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    May 20, 2008

    AUSTIN, Texas (KXAN) -- Georgetown Police Officer Jimmy Fennell's guilty pleas to kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a woman in his custody Tuesday could play a role in the appeal process of convicted murderer Rodney Reed.

    Those close to the death row inmate's murder case said there are still many unanswered questions.

    "They need to know that I'm an innocent man sitting on death row," Reed said.

    In Texas 33 men have served a combined 427 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. And those are only the known cases.

    "Occasionally, people are going to be convicted when they're actually innocent," Reed said.

    Attorney Bryce Benjet represents Reed, who was convicted in the strangulation death of 19-year-old Stacy Stites.

    Reed has always maintained his innocence, claiming his DNA found in Stites' body was there because the two were secretly dating.

    "The last time I saw Stacy alive was the night before, on the 22nd, we were together, we had sex," Reed said in a 2003 interview.

    Yet it is not Reed's DNA that is at issue. DNA found on beer cans found near Stites' body excludes Reed but points to two former police officers, who were also friends of Stites' fiancé -- then Giddings police officer Fennell.

    Despite failing two lie detector tests when asked if he killed his fiancé, Fennell was ruled out as a suspect, because investigators said he could not have dumped Stites' body and returned home in the established timeline.

    That scenario also assumes Fennell was alone and did not have a ride.

    A report issued by the Department of Public Safety crime lab links the beer cans to David Hall, who was then a Giddings police officer. He was also friend, next-door neighbor and partner of officers Fennell and Ed Samela.

    A further DNA report excludes 99.9 percent of the entire Caucasian population.

    Hall and Samela could not be excluded.

    Samela has since killed himself.

    "The DNA on these beer cans links law enforcement officers to the crime scene, associates, close associates of Mr. Fennell," Benjet said.

    Private investigator Duane Olney said DNA evidence was withheld by prosecutors, and thus never heard by the jury.

    "It may have been an honest mistake, it doesn't matter, we didn't get it," Olney said. "It is frustrating when you look at all these things that are starting to fit into place."

    One such example involves the man who oversaw the Reed investigation, Richard Hernandez, Bastrop's former sheriff who also pleaded guilty to six felonies.

    There was also a Bastrop woman who said she wanted to testify but was never called. She said she had seen Fennell and Stites together the morning of the murder.

    "When you have an eyewitness that sees something that is completely inconsistent with the story that was presented for which Mr. Reed got the death penalty, that's the kind of information a jury ought to hear," Benjet said.

    Meanwhile, Fennell will be locked up for his most recent crimes against a woman.

    With the Reed case still in the appeals court, prosecutors have declined requests for interviews.

    Yet state sources for KXAN Austin News said if you're going to look at the arrest of Fennell as proof that Reed is innocent, then the same holds true for the death row inmate's background.

    Reed's criminal record includes three charges for sexual assault, one for criminal attempt and one for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle. All were filed on the same day just prior to Reed's murder trial, and they are all still open, meaning Reed was never convicted of the charges.

    Reed's lawyers have asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a new trial. They cited Fennell's recent charges in their motion.

    The appeals court is expected to rule by late August.

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    July 17, 2009

    Attorney files to submit more evidence in death row case

    Rodney Reed's attorney says new information should prove convicted man's innocence.

    The attorney for death row inmate Rodney Reed filed a motion Wednesday asking an appeals court for a new trial because of what he cited as new evidence against a former suspect in the murder of Stacey Stites.

    Bryce Benjet, Reed's attorney, said the new evidence about Jimmy Fennell Jr., Stites' fiancé at the time, includes what Benjet said was Fennell's personal Web site that contains sexual content and violent images.

    Reed is on death row for the 1996 strangling of 19-year-old Stites in Bastrop County, but Reed's attorney says Fennell, then a Giddings police officer, should have been investigated more thoroughly as a suspect.

    Benjet said other recent evidence includes a woman's allegations that Fennell acted improperly as a Georgetown police officer when he pulled her over and Fennell's admitting in May to kidnapping and having sex with a woman in custody in October.

    Fennell resigned from the department in January and is awaiting trial in the kidnapping incident.

    "I think it confirms everything about Jimmy Fennell's character that we've said from the beginning," Benjet said. "If the jury knew everything that we know now, I'm confident that a jury would never have convicted Reed."

    Fennell's attorney, Bob Phillips, said Benjet is becoming desperate and that the conviction won't be overturned because Reed's DNA was found on Stites' body.

    "Every time there is another news story, it has the potential to taint any jury pool for my case, whether the allegations are true, false, reckless or utterly unfounded," Phillips said.

    Fennell pleaded guilty in May to kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a person in custody and would have received two years in prison and 10 years probation under the plea deal, but District Judge Burt Carnes denied the agreement and set a September trial date.

    Fennell is accused of driving an intoxicated woman to a secluded area, asking her to dance for him and then raping her as she leaned on his police cruiser, according to court documents.

    Benjet said an image of a woman leaning over the back of a car in revealing clothing on what he says is Fennell's MySpace page is relevant because of the allegations of raping the woman against his car.

    The Web site does not contain Fennell's name, and the owner of the site is only pictured in full police SWAT gear, including a face mask, but Benjet said an acquaintance of Fennell came forward with the site and said Fennell used it to solicit women for sex.

    Phillips said there is no way to positively identify whose page it is and that the images Benjet cites were not posted by the site's owner.

    "I have no idea if this is Jimmy Fennell's Web site, but a lawyer can allege anything he wants in a writ of habeas corpus," Phillips said. "Proving it is quite another matter."

    http://www.statesman.com/news/conten...tlid=inform_sr

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    Austin Chronicle article

    Rape Victim Believes Rodney Reed Is Innocent

    In 2007, then Georgetown PD Sgt. Jimmy Fennell, Jr., kidnapped a 20-year-old woman he'd encountered while on duty and answering a call, telling her he was going to give her a ride to meet up with her boyfriend. Instead, he took her to a park, slammed her against the rear quarter-panel of his patrol vehicle, pulled out his gun, put it by her head, and raped her.

    After he finished his assault, he told her she'd better keep her mouth shut – or else, when he was released from prison, he would "hunt me down and he would kill me," the woman recalled for filmmaker Ryan Polomski, in an interview to be included in an as-yet-unfinished follow-up to his 2006 documentary, State v. Reed. The woman, who has never been publicly identified, told Polomski, in a phone conversation recorded earlier this month, that she does not believe it was the first time Fennell had done such a thing. They were in a public park, in plain sight, and he was not nervous; he was aggressive and angry, but also at ease. "He didn't act like it was his first time being mean and hateful toward a woman," she said. "He was angry, especially when I told him no. It made him mad, extremely mad.”

    In fact, she said, his demeanor before, during, and after assaulting her led her to believe he might be capable of much more violence – including the 1996 murder of his then-fiance, 19-year-old Stacey Stites. "Absolutely; absolutely I do, 120%, based off of what Jimmy Fennell, Jr. has done to me and the experience I went through with him, I think that man is more than capable of murder," she said.

    Stites was murdered in April 1996. Her body was found by the side of a country road near Bastrop. DNA from semen found inside her belonged to Rodney Reed and on the basis of that match, officials concluded that while on foot he somehow abducted her as she drove from Giddings to Bastrop to work an early shift at the H-E-B. He then raped and murdered her and dumped her body. Notably, aside from the DNA, there was no other physical evidence linking Reed to the crime. Reed was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death in 1998.

    Reed has maintained that he was actually involved in an affair with Stites just before she died, which would in theory explain the DNA. Reed's supporters (among them friends of Stites') argue that Fennell – who, they propose, found out about the affair and was enraged – is a far more likely suspect, one never fully considered by investigators. Police never searched the apartment Stites and Fennell shared, though it was the last place she was reportedly seen alive, and they had returned to Fennell the pickup truck she'd allegedly been driving the morning she disappeared before thoroughly processing it for evidence.

    Questions about Fennell's possible involvement in the crime have grown more earnest since the 2007 rape. In the aftermath of that incident, additional evidence came to light that several other women had made complaints about Fennell assaulting or stalking them while on duty. Additionally, a man named Keith Tubbs told Georgetown police that Fennell's then wife, with whom Tubbs worked, told him that Fennell had abused her, that she was afraid of him, and that she was concerned about his possible involvement in Stites' death.

    Polomski's followup to State v. Reed, which premiered at SXSW in 2006, will explore the additional evidence. To date, state and federal courts have been unimpressed by the new evidence and have denied each of Reed's appeals.

    In 2008, Fennell pled guilty to reduced charges in connection with the rape of the 20-year-old and was sentenced to 10 years in prison; he is scheduled for release in September 2018. That alarms his 2007 victim, who recalls that he threatened to kill her if she reported the rape. "I am scared for him to be released," she said. "All I can picture is a gun to my head and the last thing he said to me."



    http://www.austinchronicle.com/daily...d-is-innocent/
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  7. #7
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    He'd have more credibility if he'd mentioned the affair at the earliest opportunity, doing so only after being told about the DNA match makes it look like a concocted story to explain how he's connected to the victim.

    Plus if Fennell really was a hot head who'd found out about the affair, why did all of Rodney's friends know about it? Think about it, if you were cheating on your racist and psychotic fiance (whether he was or not in real life doesn't matter, in the defence version of events he was) with a black man who lives in the same neighbourhood as you, would you want to make public appearances or really be keen on all his friends knowing about it? If anything bringing lots of alleged witnesses to this affair makes it less credible.

    Unless she was planning to leave Fennell, in which case I'm sure some of Stites's friends would be able to corroborate her feelings before her murder and add some more meat to the repeated affair claims.

    I won't outright dismiss his version of events, or dismiss the possibility of something more credible backing it up being presented as evidence, but at the moment I don't see it being credible. It's just clutching at straws, they're good straws, but they're still straws.

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    Bastrop County DA's office turns away Rodney Reed petition

    Sandra Reed is Rodney Reed's mother. He was convicted in the 1996 rape and murder of Stacy Stites in Bastrop County.

    Sandra said, "It hurts so much that...I'm numb. But, I'm strong."

    The 46-year-old was sentenced to death in 1998.

    Reed's appeal was also recently denied by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

    "You can say I'm used to it, but believe it or not, each time, I'm appalled," said Sandra.

    A petition was started by Rodney's supporters a few months ago. It has 11,000 signatures of people from all over the country.

    Sandra said, "They would not accept the petitions and it was so, very, very disappointing."

    Sandra and some others went to the Bastrop District Attorney's office to hand-deliver the petition.

    "He said he was an assistant to the D.A., Bryan Goertz, and he would not...accept those petitions and it was for us to return the petitions to Rodney's lawyer and let them present to Bryan Goertz," said Sandra.

    The Bastrop District Attorney's office official statement to FOX 7 was "no comment."

    Sandra added, "With the judge, Reva Towslee, which is the daughter of the judge that wrongfully convicted him, with her hovering over this, how can we get freedom?"

    Reed's supporters are asking Bastrop County officials to stay his execution date and to either grant him a new trial or drop the charges against him.

    "When you know the truth and know that he's innocent, it makes you fight that much harder," said Sandra.

    It's a fight she's been battling for 17 years.

    Sandra said, "Even though people within these courts in Bastrop sold their souls to convict an innocent person, revenge is His and that's all I gotta say."

    A group rep says they may try to get an appointment with the Bastrop DA or, just give the petition to Rodney's attorneys.

    His case is still being litigated at this time.

    http://www.myfoxaustin.com/story/255...#ixzz32EOsjvSl

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by Richard86 View Post
    He'd have more credibility if he'd mentioned the affair at the earliest opportunity, doing so only after being told about the DNA match makes it look like a concocted story to explain how he's connected to the victim.
    That kind of clinches it for me barring the emergence of heretofore undiscovered or unreleased evidence of high exculpatory value.

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    Hi Richard86,

    I like your posts, and usually agree with your analyses. Much of what you say above makes sense, too.

    This, however:

    Quote Originally Posted by Richard86 View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Helen69 View Post
    Defense attorney's have shown a pattern of violence on the part of Fennell, including his history of stalking and threatening former girlfriends. Fennell was recently sentenced to prison for the rape of a woman who was in his custody while he was on duty as a police officer in the city of Georgetown, TX.
    It could equally be a pattern of violence brought about by the stress of having his fiance raped and murdered, progressively made worse as his name is dragged through the mud by the defence of the man who raped and murdered the woman he loved.
    That doesn't make sense to me. If your fiancé is raped and murdered, that under no circumstances would lead a decent human being to rape someone he had arrested. And I don't care how much your name is being dragged through the mud, that once again would not lead any decent human being to then rape someone. Him being found guilty of rape--especially given that only six percent of rapists spend even one night in jail, much less get sentenced to prison--says terrible things about him.

    Also, his history of stalking and threatening former girlfriends implies that he was doing this before his fiancé was raped and murdered, which means that obviously the stress of his fiancé being raped and murdered had nothing to do with his violent behavior. And even if they came after, what happened to his fiancé in no way would lead a nonviolent non-misogynist person to stalk and threaten later girlfriends. If anything, one would hope it would make the person even more sensitive to violence against women.

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