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Thread: Rodney Rodell Reed - Texas Death Row

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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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    December 17, 2008

    Also on Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied death row inmate Rodney Reed's request for a new trial in the 1996 abduction, rape and murder of a Central Texas woman.

    Reed contended the two were romantically involved, even though 19-year-old Stacey Lee Stites was engaged to marry a police officer when she was killed.

    Reed's attorneys accused prosecutors of withholding evidence and said they had new proof of Reed's innocence: DNA on beer cans found near the murder scene, a rural Bastrop County roadside about 30 miles southeast of Austin. Prosecutors denied wrongdoing.

    (Source: The Houston Chronicle)

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    July 1, 2009

    HOUSTON — Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed lost another appeal before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which on Wednesdsay rejected his claims that new evidence pointed to another man as the killer of a 19-year-old woman in Bastrop County 13 years ago.

    In a sixth petition to the state's highest criminal appeals court, Reed's lawyers argued they had evidence suggesting the boyfriend of Stacey Stites as the person who abducted, raped and murdered her.

    Stites' fiance, Jimmy Fennell, is a former police officer who later was jailed for abducting and having improper sexual activity with a woman in his custody.

    The court, however, said the information submitted by Reed failed to show innocence and failed to show that prosecutors withheld it.

    "The allegations of Fennell's misconduct and domestic violence do not exonerate (Reed)," the court said in a brief decision. "The totality of the evidence before us still supports a guilty verdict."

    The latest challenge cited Fennell's misconduct as he worked as a police officer in Georgetown and earlier in Giddings. It also pointed to a report of domestic violence from Fennell's ex-wife and an affidavit of a "possible sighting of the victim and (Reed) together," according to the court.

    Reed, 41, has insisted he and Stites had a continuing secret affair even though Stites was engaged to soon marry Fennell when her body was found along a rural road after she failed to show up for work at a supermarket in Bastrop, southeast of Austin.

    Reed is black and Stites was white and Reed's lawyers have described the racial aspects of the case as explosive. The also accused prosecutors of improperly withholding evidence. Prosecutors denied any wrongdoing and disputed the claims of a secret relationship between the victim and Reed.

    Reed was arrested almost a year after the April 1996 slaying of Stites after his DNA surfaced in the investigation of an unrelated sexual assault case.

    The court also turned down appeals in three other Texas death row cases, including a man whose death sentence for a murder in Smith County was thrown out by the court in 2005.

    This time the court upheld the second death sentence for Gregory Russeau, 39, convicted of killing a 75-year-old auto mechanic during a robbery in Tyler. Attorneys for Russeau raised 17 claims of error from his second punishment trial, including insufficient evidence, improper psychiatric evidence, constitutional challenges and improper jury instructions.

    The murdered man, James Syvertson, was found at his shop by his wife, daughter and grandchildren. His wallet and car were stolen. Russeau was arrested in Syvertson's car in Longview the day after the May 2001 murder. His palm print and hair were found at the auto shop. Russeau had a previous conviction for burglary.

    His first death sentence was overturned after attorneys contended reports of his misbehavior while in prison improperly were presented to jurors when they were considering punishment.

    In another case, the court refused an appeal for Chuong Duong Tong, condemned for the 1997 slaying of Houston police officer Coung Huy "Tony" Trinh, who was working off-duty at his family's convenience store when he was shot during a robbery. Tong, 32, is a refugee from Vietnam. He raised 12 claims challenging his conviction and sentence.

    The court also refused an appeal from Patrick Murphy Jr., the last of the infamous "Texas 7" fugitives to receive the death penalty for the shooting death of an Irving police officer on Christmas Eve 2000. In his appeal, Murphy, 48, raised eight challenges to his conviction and sentence and all were rejected.

    Murphy was serving 50 years for aggravated sexual assault when he and six other inmates broke out of the Connally Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. About two weeks later, Officer Aubrey Hawkins was killed when he interrupted the escapees' robbery of an Irving sporting goods store.

    Murphy and five of his companions were captured the following month in Colorado. The seventh fugitive killed himself as police moved in.

    One of them, Michael Rodriguez, was executed last year. Murphy and the four others remain on death row.

    http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6507199.html

  8. #8
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    On March 5, 2013, Reed filed an appeal with the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci.../ca5/13-70009/

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    Appeals court reviews Rodney Reed's case

    Reed on death row for 1996 rape and murder

    By David Scott
    KXAN

    AUSTIN - Family and friends held a vigil Wednesday at the State Capitol in hopes that a Bastrop man can win a new trial.

    Rodney Reed is currently on death row for the 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stiles.

    On Wednesday, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard Reed's case in what could be his last ditch bid to avoid the death penalty.

    "I just feel he'll get a fair trial," said his mother, Sandra Reed. "I'm confident that my son will be home."

    Reed, who turns 46 in two weeks, is black. Stites was white. Reed supporters believe race played a role in his verdict.

    "A small town in Texas, a black man dating a white woman, the fiancé a police officer," said Lily Hughes of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty. "I think race very much has something to do with it."

    Reed's defenders also believe DNA evidence not previously presented but now admissible could clear him.

    At issue is how old the DNA semen sample found on the body was. Reed maintains the DNA was from many hours before her death and their relationship was consensual.

    Also in dispute is DNA on beer cans that suggests two friends of the victim's fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, were at the crime scene.

    No execution date has been set and there won't be one until a decision from the appeals court.

    "In the beginning visits were devastating," Sandra Reed said. "I would cry going and cry coming back. But 16 years is a long time and you get used to it." She hoped to visit him on Thursday.

    "One day he will be free," she added. "With our prayers, I can't go on without my faith."

    http://www.kxan.com/news/local/austi...ney-reeds-case

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    State vs Rodney Reed

    This is a small documentary of the state of Texas vs Rodney Reed. There is more then one part. This is just the first part. Don't currently have time to post the other parts. Although they are very easy to find on YouTube. Edited post, this is a link to the full version.

    http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gWfAMuPZCf0
    Last edited by Dillydust; 12-15-2013 at 05:59 PM.

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