Texas Court Holds Innocence Hearing for Rodney Reed, as Advocates Rally in Support

Lawyers for Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed (pic­tured) pre­sent­ed four days of tes­ti­mo­ny in a Bastrop County cour­t­house in an attempt to estab­lish his inno­cence of the mur­der of Stacey Stites, as activists, reli­gious lead­ers, and mem­bers of Reed’s fam­i­ly ral­lied in sup­port of his case. 

The hear­ing, which is expect­ed to take two weeks, began on July 19, 2021, with Reed’s case for inno­cence. His lawyers pre­sent­ed evi­dence that Reed, who is Black, was hav­ing an affair with Stites, who is white; that Stites was actu­al­ly mur­dered by her abu­sive fiancé, Jimmy Fennell; and that Fennell, who at that time was a police offi­cer in Giddings, Texas, had framed Reed for the mur­der. Numerous wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that they had seen Stites togeth­er with Reed on pri­or occa­sions, heard Fennell threat­en to kill her if she cheat­ed on him, and heard Fennell admit to the killing. Two foren­sics experts tes­ti­fied that Stites died hours ear­li­er than the pros­e­cu­tion had claimed, at a time that Fennell had said she was with him. Fennell took the stand and denied that he had com­mit­ted the killing.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered the hear­ing in November 2019, when it halt­ed Reed’s exe­cu­tion just five days before the state planned to exe­cute him. Reed’s sup­port­ers gath­ered out­side the cour­t­house on July 17, 2021, two days before the start of a hear­ing, to ral­ly in sup­port of his case, and they packed the court­room each day of the hearing. 

Speaking to the crowd at the ral­ly, Reed’s broth­er, Rodrick vowed, ​“We’re not going to stop because we know the truth. And we’re going to stand on the truth because it remains the same. And we will stand today to see jus­tice done in this case.” Reed also spoke to his sup­port­ers via speak­er phone dur­ing the ral­ly, urg­ing them to ​“Continue the strug­gle. Continue the fight.”

Prosecutors at Reed’s 1998 tri­al alleged that Reed did not know Stites, but abduct­ed, raped, and killed her. Reed’s lawyers pre­sent­ed tes­ti­mo­ny at the hear­ing sup­port­ing his claim that he and Stites were hav­ing a secret affair at the time of her death.

The Evidence at the Hearing

Two of Stites’ cowork­ers at a Bastrop gro­cery store tes­ti­fied about Stites’ rela­tion­ship with Reed. Alicia Slater said Stites told her she was not excit­ed about mar­ry­ing Fennell because she was ​“sleep­ing with a Black man named Rodney.” Another cowork­er, Susan Hugen, report­ed that when Stites intro­duced her to Reed, “[s]he said, ​‘This is my very good friend, Rodney.’ She was very flir­ty with him. Giggly and hap­py.” Hugen also tes­ti­fied that she saw indi­ca­tions that Stites was being abused by Fennell — bruis­es on her arms, includ­ing one in the shape of a hand­print. Once, when she was talk­ing with Stites out­side the store and Fennell arrived, Hugen tes­ti­fied, ​“She was white as a ghost and quit laughing.” 

In 2008, Fennell was sen­tenced to ten years in prison for kid­nap­ping and sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a woman after he respond­ed to her call for police assis­tance. Two men who were impris­oned with him tes­ti­fied at the hear­ing that he had con­fessed to killing Stites. Michael Bordelon said Fennell ​“told me ​‘a damn (n‑word)’ killed his fiancée and that man was on death row.” Later in that con­ver­sa­tion, Bordelon tes­ti­fied, Fennell amend­ed his sto­ry. ​“I took care of her,” Bordelon quot­ed Fennell as say­ing, sim­u­lat­ing stran­gu­la­tion. ​“That damn (n‑word) is going to do the time.”

Arthur Snow, who said he met Fennell in prison when Fennell sought pro­tec­tion from a white suprema­cist gang, told the court that Fennell said, ​“You would­n’t believe how eas­i­ly a belt would break, stran­gling a (n‑word)-loving whore.” When Stites’ body was found, the belt that was used to stran­gle her was in two pieces. 

An insur­ance sales­per­son, Ruby Volek, tes­ti­fied that while Stites was fill­ing out a life insur­ance form that Volek had giv­en her, she heard Fennell say to Stites, ​“If I ever catch you mess­ing around on me, I will kill you, and nobody will ever know I did it.” Lee Clampit, a retired Lee County Deputy who knew Fennell and attend­ed Stites’ funer­al ser­vice tes­ti­fied that, dur­ing the ser­vice, Fennell had said to him, ​“She got what she deserved.” 

Reed’s lawyers also pre­sent­ed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny from two doc­tors who tes­ti­fied that the state of Stites’ body at the time it was dis­cov­ered indi­cat­ed that she had died ear­li­er than the 3 – 5 a.m. win­dow pre­sent­ed by the pros­e­cu­tion at tri­al, dur­ing a time that Fennell had said he was with Stites. Forensic pathol­o­gist Dr. Gregory Davis also rebutted sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly false tes­ti­mo­ny from the state’s foren­sic pathol­o­gist that intact sperm can live no longer than 26 hours. Prosecutors had argued at tri­al that the pres­ence of Reed’s sperm in Stites’ body showed that he had raped Stites before killing her. Reed con­tend­ed that he had had con­sen­su­al sex with Stites days before her death. Sperm can remain intact for up to a week, Davis testified.

Reed’s lawyers also pre­sent­ed evi­dence that Fennell had failed two poly­graph tests about the mur­der, had no ali­bi for when the mur­der actu­al­ly occurred, and cleaned out his bank account the morn­ing Stites died.

Perhaps the most dra­mat­ic tes­ti­mo­ny occurred on the fourth day of the hear­ing, when Fennell waived his con­sti­tu­tion­al priv­i­lege against self-incrim­i­na­tion and took the stand. Fennell denied hav­ing killed Stites and said that the wit­ness­es who had tes­ti­fied that Stites knew Reed, that Fennell had abused Stites, and that Fennell had admit­ted to the killing had been lying. He like­wise accused the two doc­tors who tes­ti­fied for Reed regard­ing the time of death of lying.

Asked by Reed’s lawyer, Andrew MacRae, if he had stran­gled Stites, Fennell replied, ​“I did not stran­gle her.” When MacRae sug­gest­ed, ​“A rea­son­able per­son could con­clude that it was you who killed Miss Stites, not Rodney Reed,” Fennell said, ​“No. They’re just telling what they think they heard. They’re lies.”

After court adjourned, Roderick Reed said: ​“All I know is that Jimmy Fennell has been sit­ting up there call­ing every­body else liars and every­thing he’s say­ing is the truth and that’s some­thing that any­one with com­mon sense would not believe.” 

“All the evi­dence points toward Jimmy Fennell,” he said. ​“Everything points to Jimmy Fennell. So, in the end he’s going to get his.”

The hear­ing is expect­ed to con­tin­ue for a sec­ond week, after which Judge J.D. Langley will then con­sid­er the evi­dence and issue an advi­so­ry opin­ion. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals will review Judge Langley’s deci­sion and the evi­dence pre­sent­ed at the hear­ing before mak­ing the final deter­mi­na­tion whether to grant Reed a new trial.

As Reed’s exe­cu­tion date neared in November 2019, sup­port­ers sub­mit­ted peti­tions signed by near­ly 3 mil­lion peo­ple ask­ing Governor Greg Abbott to com­mute his death sen­tence. That effort was joined by a bipar­ti­san coali­tion of 26 mem­bers of the Texas House of Representatives and 16 Texas State Senators, as well as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Texas Congressman Michael McCaul (both Republicans), the European Union, and the pres­i­dent of the American Bar Association. Reed’s case also received high pro­file sup­port from syn­di­cat­ed tele­vi­sion host, Dr. Phil McGraw, who aired a two-part episode about the case, Oprah Winfrey, super­star per­form­ers Beyoncé, Meek Mill, Questlove, and Rihanna, anti-death penal­ty activist Sister Helen Prejean, con­ser­v­a­tive tele­vi­sion host and Texas native Chuck Woolery, and real­i­ty tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Kim Kardashian West.