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Thread: Rodney Rodell Reed - Texas Death Row

  1. #81
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Reed's links to other rapes are rarely mentioned in articles about his capital case nor is his prior use of an "illicit affair" excuse.

  2. #82
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State opposes defense motion for new evidence in Reed case

    State prosecutors have come out against a recent motion filed by defense attorneys for death row inmate Rodney Reed seeking new interviews and documents.

    Rodney Reed was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for the rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Less than two weeks before he was scheduled to be put to death this year, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed his execution based on a new appeal Reed’s attorneys filed in February.

    Reed and his lawyers have long claimed that he and Stites were engaged in a consensual secret affair, which would explain the presence of his DNA in her body, rather than prosecutors’ assertions that Stites was raped shortly before being strangled. The affair, defense lawyers say, gave Stites’ fiance Jimmy Fennell motive to kill her.

    Reed’s attorneys filed a motion last month seeking to interview witnesses and obtain documents related to an investigation they learned of in January that they say points to Stites’ fiance Jimmy Fennell as the killer.

    Prosecutors, however, argue in their opposition motion that the Bastrop County trial court lacks jurisdiction to grant the defense’s motion because Reed’s appeal is still pending with the Court of Criminal Appeals.

    “Rodney Reed, a death-sentenced Texas inmate, seeks unprecedented expansion of jurisdiction and discovery authority in Texas trial courts disguised as a discovery motion,” prosecutors for the state stated in a motion filed in Bastrop County District Court Oct. 21.

    The defense’s request centers around a January 2015 interview by Giddings and Bastrop investigators of the widow of a murdered Giddings police officer, according to court documents. In the January interview, the woman told investigators she believed a fellow Giddings police officer who worked with her husband knew he was investigating Fennell and believed he killed his fiance, Stites.

    In the motion, Reed’s attorneys are seeking documents as well as permission to interview law enforcement officials who might have knowledge of the Giddings Police Department’s investigation into Fennell.

    Furthermore, prosecutors say Reed could have included the requests in his most recent February appeal since his attorneys received the recorded interview a month before it was submitted, according to the motion.

    Additionally, the attorneys requested interviews with two of the state’s forensic experts in order to see if they still stand by their trial testimony, in light of Reed’s most recent appeal which includes affidavits from three renowned forensic pathologists that refute the claim Stites was murdered after 3 a.m. while on her way to her job at the Bastrop H-E-B.

    Instead, the appeal says, the new time of death leaves Fennell as the only suspect, based on his statements that he and Stites were alone prior to her leaving for work.

    Fennell, a former Georgetown Police Sergeant, is presently in jail after pleading guilty in 2008 to charges of kidnapping and improper sexual conduct with a person in police custody. Fennell was accused of sexually assaulting a woman involved in an October 2007 domestic disturbance call he responded to.

    http://www.statesman.com/news/news/l...ce-in-r/npHYj/

  3. #83
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Moh View Post
    Reed's links to other rapes are rarely mentioned in articles about his capital case nor is his prior use of an "illicit affair" excuse.
    Nor is the fact that he's claimed this since his trial, and the jury rejected it (obviously), and that one of his relatives who claimed that she'd been visiting their address called Stacey "Stephanie".

  4. #84
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    Rodney Reed supporters continue to rally for inmate’s freedom

    A year after Rodney Reed came within 10 days of being put to death for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, those who maintain his innocence haven’t lost hope.

    “We’ve been going through this for nearly 20 years — it’s like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, but we still have hope,” Rodney’s mother Sandra Reed said to a crowd of supporters gathered in Bastrop on Saturday.

    “Rodney is still alive on this date — on the anniversary that they would have executed him. He is alive, well and waiting to come home.”

    His brother Roderick Reed led about 50 people carrying signs calling for the inmate’s release in a march through the streets of Bastrop Saturday.

    They started near Reed’s family home on Martin Luther King Drive, walking to and down Main Street and then back past the Bastrop County Courthouse, where Reed was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for the rape and murder of Stites, a 19-year-old Giddings resident who was strangled 18 days before her wedding date.

    “Texas justice is a lie, Rodney Reed must not die,” the marchers chanted. “Free Rodney Reed, Free Rodney Reed!”

    The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Reed’s execution on Feb. 23, 2015 based on a new appeal his attorneys filed the same month claiming that a new look at old forensic evidence shows Reed did not kill Stites.

    It argues a lack of rigor mortis and the presence of congealed blood that had pooled in unexpected parts of Stites’ body indicate that she had been killed hours earlier.

    The new time of death of midnight or earlier, the appeal said, points to her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, as the killer.

    Reed, his attorneys and many supporters have long claimed that he and Stites were engaged in a consensual secret affair, which would explain the presence of his DNA in her body, rather than prosecutors’ assertions that Stites was raped shortly before being strangled. The affair, defense lawyers say, gave Fennell motive to kill her.

    The state’s highest criminal court has taken no action on Reed’s case since issuing the stay March 5, 2015.

    Lily Hughes, a leader of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, said they were there Saturday to celebrate that Reed is still alive, but to also bring attention to the need for his release.

    “We’re here today to let them know that we’re not forgetting,” Hughes said to cheers. “We’re going to keep fighting and we’re going to free Rodney.”

    Among the supporters there Saturday was Kevin Gannon, a retired NYPD homicide detective who got involved with Reed’s case through the A&E channel true-crime television show “Dead Again,” where a team of detectives re-investigate controversial murder cases.

    Gannon said he arrested thousands over his long career in law enforcement and is committed to following the evidence where it leads.

    “I understand how the criminal justice works, being in it for over 20 years,” Gannon said, “but I’m hopeful that the state of Texas will see the evidence, move forward as quickly as possible to free an innocent man and put the real person responsible for Stacey’s murder behind bars and then there will be justice for Stacey, for her family, justice for Rodney and his family.”

    At Saturday’s event, Sandra Reed said she had visited her son about three weeks ago and that he was optimistic because of the support he is receiving.

    “We’re just waiting for him to come home,” she said. “He needs to be home and to be free.”

    http://www.statesman.com/news/news/l...r-inmat/nqgZm/

  5. #85
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    Death Watch: New Rodney Reed Filing

    Death row inmate's lawyers seek retrial

    Attorneys for death row inmate Rodney Reed have filed a supplement to the Feb. 2015 brief seeking a retrial on his death penalty case, arguing that new evidence has come their way that further indicates that Reed is not responsible for the April 1996 murder of Stacey Stites.

    The brief, filed June 7 to the Court of Criminal Appeals and Reed's trial court in Bastrop, points to a conflicting detail in the timeline of former Giddings Police Officer Jimmy Fennell, Stites' fiancé and the man Reed defenders believe is actually responsible for killing Stites.

    Since Fennell first gave his official statement to police two days after Stites' body was found, the understanding was that he spent the night of April 22 at home with his fiancée – beginning at 8pm or 8:30 – and that he slept through her early morning departure for work at H-E-B. (Fennell testified in court to this chronology, as well.) But according to a recent interview with Curtis L. Davis – a Bastrop County Sher*iff's deputy who at the time was one of Fennell's best friends – Fennell told Davis that he spent the night of April 22 drinking beer with fellow police officers by his truck after Little League baseball practice. Davis said Fennell told him the next morning that he didn't return home to Stites until 10 or 11 o'clock that night.

    Reed's lead counsel, Innocence Project attorney Bryce Benjet, explained in the 19-page brief that Davis revealed this conflicting detail during an April interview with CNN. The network is currently producing a special for its show Death Row Stories about Reed's case and the efforts to save his life. (Indeed, the Chronicle was in Living*ston, where death row inmates are housed, when CNN's crew interviewed Reed.) Benjet wrote that he had not been aware of the interview until one of CNN's producers asked Benjet to comment "about certain statements made by Officer Davis." He said that a producer of the show allowed him and an assistant to view "portions of the interview with Officer Davis and to briefly review a transcript of the entire interview." CNN declined to release a copy of the interview or the transcript for use with the filing. Benjet expects the "relevant portions" of the recording to be part of the special when it airs. A representative for CNN told the Chronicle that there is currently no airdate for the episode.

    Benjet argues that Fennell's conflicting chronologies concerning how he spent the evening before Stites' murder further represents evidence of Fennell's consciousness of guilt, and that the notion of his drinking well into the night on April 22 would put him out of his and Stites' apartment at a time that three forensic pathologists have concluded was the actual time that Stites was killed. The state's theory holds that Stites was abducted by Reed and killed on her way to work on April 23, around 3am. Reed's Feb. 2015 petition for a retrial was rooted in the scientific conclusion that Stites actually died before midnight, on April 22, and that her body was moved from one location to another after she had been killed. The 2015 filing also notes that Davis accompanied Fennell through much of what the state accepts to be his discovery process of his red pickup truck after the murder, and notes how Davis signed out of a 12-hour work shift on April 22 after only one hour because of what he described as a "broken tooth." Davis then spent the next three days away from work on leave for a "personal death." The filing further notes how there is no documentation of any attempt by the police to interview Davis or otherwise establish whether he could have driven Jimmy Fennell home after dispensing of Stites and the truck.

    The idea that Fennell was providing conflicting statements in the aftermath of Stites' murder aligns with six other instances listed by Benjet in the initial 2015 application for a rehearing. Benjet also implies that Fennell provided false testimony during trial, and that the state's failure to provide this information on trial constitutes a violation of due process under Brady v. Maryland. (Fennell is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence that began in 2008 after he accepted a plea deal on charges that he raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in nearby Georgetown.)

    "In this case, the State failed to disclose Fennell's inconsistent statement as to his whereabouts on the night of April 22, 1996," Benjet wrote. "Even though the trial prosecutors may not have been aware of what Officer Davis learned from Fennell, Officer Davis was a Bastrop County Sheriff's Offic*er. And the [BCSO] was the lead agency investigating Stacey's murder. Accord*ing*ly, Officer Davis' knowledge of what Fennell told him is imputed to the State."

    Reed most recently faced an execution date of March 5, 2015, but saw his execution stayed two weeks earlier, as the Court of Criminal Appeals sought more time to review the merits of the claims made in his Feb. 2015 filing. There is currently no timetable for advancements in his case.

    http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/...y-reed-filing/

  6. #86
    Senior Member CnCP Legend FFM's Avatar
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  7. #87
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State court wants additional answers in Rodney Reed appeal

    By Chuck Lindell
    The Austin American-Statesman

    The long legal saga of Rodney Reed, sentenced to death in a 1996 rape-murder in Bastrop, took another turn Wednesday when the state’s highest criminal court raised additional questions about his request for DNA tests on several pieces of evidence.

    In a 7-1 ruling, the Court of Criminal Appeals ordered visiting Judge Doug Shaver to answer questions that weren’t addressed when Shaver recommended, in December 2014, that Reed not be allowed to conduct additional DNA testing.

    Reed’s lawyers have been pressing to test the murder weapon — a belt that had been found in two pieces — as well as victim Stacey Stites’ clothing and other crime scene evidence that could have come into contact with the killer.

    The court ordered Shaver to determine whether the items are in a condition that allows DNA testing, whether it is likely the items contain biological material that can be tested and whether the chain of custody ensures that the items weren’t “substituted, tampered with, replaced or altered.”

    Presiding Judge Sharon Keller disagreed, writing a dissenting opinion that accused Reed’s lawyers of acting in bad faith by waiting years to press for DNA testing, expanding their request at the last minute and waiting four months to submit Reed’s DNA sample to the courts.

    “This is the conduct of a defense team that realizes there is no hope of exoneration and is simply trying to delay the inevitable execution,” Keller wrote.

    Defense lawyer Bryce Benjet disagreed with Keller’s assessment, saying Reed sought DNA testing during his 1998 trial, again in 2001 and most recently to take advantage of technological improvements in DNA methods.

    “The state has consistently opposed DNA testing in this case. It certainly doesn’t make any sense in 2016 that the government wants to put somebody to death without using the best available science before they do it,” Benjet said.

    Reed, now 48, was 10 days from execution when the Court of Criminal Appeals stepped in with a February 2015 order halting the lethal injection based on a defense petition claiming that a new look at old forensic evidence would show that Reed was innocent of the crime.

    Reed has argued that he and Stites were engaged in a secret affair, explaining DNA tests showing the presence of his semen in her body, while prosecutors say the evidence shows Reed raped Stites shortly before she was strangled.

    Defense lawyers say Stites was most likely killed by her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, who was later sentenced to 10 years in prison for kidnapping and sexual assault against a woman in his custody as a Georgetown police officer in 2007. Discovery of the affair gave Fennell a motive for murder, they argue.

    In Wednesday’s order, the appeals court gave Shaver 60 days to answer the questions but indicated that the deadline could be extended upon request.

    Judge David Newell didn’t participate in the ruling.

    http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...ney-ree/nrptW/

  8. #88
    A copy of the additional dna results ordered in 2014 that implicate Reed. This was posted on the court docket but removed because it is inculpatory and the defense probably whined about it. They really should post everything so the defense can not keep lying about the evidence.

    http://media.wix.com/ugd/235808_99b6...5a404f376d.pdf

  9. #89
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Judge’s conflicting orders roil Rodney Reed appeal

    A judge has issued conflicting recommendations for resolving death row inmate Rodney Reed’s request for additional DNA testing, throwing into disarray an appeal that has already lasted two years and two months.

    The latest legal fight began in July 2014, when Reed — on death row since 1998 — filed a request to conduct DNA testing on crime scene evidence that Bastrop County prosecutors opposed. Visiting Judge Doug Shaver rejected the request toward the end of 2014, and Reed appealed.

    Last June, the Court of Criminal Appeals returned the case to Shaver to determine whether evidence from the 1996 killing of Stacey Stites was still available for testing, whether its chain of custody was preserved and whether the items were likely to contain DNA traces.

    Shaver, a retired judge who was appointed to Reed’s case after the original judge stepped aside, ordered prosecutors and defense lawyers to draft proposed answers to the questions — a common practice — and both sides submitted a written list of findings and conclusions they hoped Shaver would adopt.

    Problems arose when Shaver signed both sides’ proposals last week and forwarded them to the Court of Criminal Appeals, even though they came to opposite conclusions about the chain of custody and the likelihood that the items contain biological material to test

    “This is a new one. I’ve never quite seen anyone rule for both sides at the same time,” said Bryce Benjet, Reed’s lawyer. “Not only is he just affixing his name on the bottom, he didn’t even figure out whose side he was taking.”

    Bastrop County District Attorney Bryan Goertz on Thursday asked the appeals court to return the matter to Shaver with an order to clarify his position within 14 days.

    As it stands now, Goertz said, Shaver has agreed with defense lawyers who believe the chain of custody is intact, and with prosecutors who insist that some items Reed wants tested could have been cross-contaminated because they were handled without gloves during Reed’s trial and weren’t stored in separate packages after trial.

    “Both cannot be right,” Goertz wrote.

    http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...-appeal/nsZPK/
    "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

  10. #90
    Quote Originally Posted by Mike View Post
    As it stands now, Goertz said, Shaver has agreed with defense lawyers who believe the chain of custody is intact, and with prosecutors who insist that some items Reed wants tested could have been cross-contaminated because they were handled without gloves during Reed’s trial and weren’t stored in separate packages after trial.

    “Both cannot be right,” Goertz wrote.

    http://www.mystatesman.com/news/news...-appeal/nsZPK/
    Why not? Why cant the chain of custody still be intact but the items contaminated and therefore of no forensic value?

    I just dont trust the media. They do such a poor job of reporting on these death penalty cases because of their own biases. So, who knows what Goertz really said.

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