Rodney Reed Files New Petition Alleging Prosecutors Illegally Withheld Evidence for 23 Years

Prosecutors hid favor­able evi­dence from Texas death-row pris­on­er Rodney Reed dur­ing his 1998 tri­al for the mur­der of Stacey Stites and then argued for his exe­cu­tion claim­ing that the evi­dence did not exist, Reed’s lawyers allege in a new court plead­ing filed in his case.

Reed has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence in Stites’ mur­der and has argued that her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, a dis­graced for­mer police offi­cer and a sex offend­er, is the killer. Reed says that he and Stites were roman­ti­cal­ly involved but hid their rela­tion­ship because they feared local reac­tion to their inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ship and because Stites was engaged to a police offi­cer with a his­to­ry of racist comments. 

In the lat­est plead­ing in Reed’s case, a Request for Grant of Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus filed in the 21^st Judicial District Court in Bastrop County, Texas and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) on December 17, 2021, Reed’s lawyers allege that Bastrop County pros­e­cu­tors ille­gal­ly with­held state­ments giv­en by Stites’ cowork­ers, friends, and neigh­bors that would have sup­port­ed Reed’s inno­cence claim and impli­cat­ed Fennell. The fil­ing says that for more than two decades, from before the time of tri­al to just before an inno­cence hear­ing in July 2021 ordered by the TCCA, pros­e­cu­tors con­cealed wit­ness state­ments from three of Stites’ cowork­ers, who told inves­ti­ga­tors that Reed and Stites knew each other. 

Prosecutors false­ly claimed at Reed’s tri­al that they ​“talked to all these peo­ple, and not one of them … ever said she was asso­ci­at­ed with that defen­dant. Ever. They weren’t dat­ing accord­ing to any­one, there weren’t friends, they weren’t asso­ciates.” They argued that Stites and Reed were strangers and that he had sex­u­al­ly assault­ed and mur­dered her as she was on her way to work.

The fil­ing also reveals that Stites’ down­stairs neigh­bor told police and a pros­e­cu­tor that he fre­quent­ly heard Stites and Fennell fight­ing. He was report­ed­ly told ​“they already had their sus­pect, that they didn’t need nobody’s help, to mind your own busi­ness, to hush his mouth.” 

Fennell — who was lat­er con­vict­ed of sex­u­al­ly assault­ing a woman he had detained in his police car — was ini­tial­ly the lead sus­pect in Stites’ mur­der. Witnesses have report­ed that Fennell had threat­ened to kill Stites if she cheat­ed on him, and two men who met Fennell while he was impris­oned on the oth­er charges said he con­fessed to murdering her.

In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a land­mark rul­ing in Brady v. Maryland that requires pros­e­cu­tors to dis­close to the defense any evi­dence that is favor­able to the defense. Withholding such evi­dence vio­lates due process if there is a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty that its dis­clo­sure would have changed the out­come of the tri­al or sen­tenc­ing, ​“The prosecution’s con­ceal­ment of state­ments from Stacey Stites’s co-work­ers and neigh­bors is a text­book exam­ple of a Brady vio­la­tion,” said Jane Pucher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project, and one of Mr. Reed’s attor­neys. ​“The con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion is as crys­tal clear as the rem­e­dy: Rodney Reed’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence must be overturned.” 

The new evi­dence was dis­closed to Reed’s defense team less than a month before his July 2021 evi­den­tiary hear­ing in Bastrop County Court, 23 years after Reed was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death. Reed would have been exe­cut­ed with­out the evi­dence ever com­ing to light if the TCCA had not stayed Reed’s November 15, 2019 exe­cu­tion date and direct­ed the tri­al court to address Reed’s claims that pros­e­cu­tors secured Reed’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence by sup­press­ing excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence and pre­sent­ing false testimony. 

After two weeks of tes­ti­mo­ny, Judge J.D. Langley rec­om­mend­ed that the crim­i­nal appeals court deny Reed’s inno­cence claim. Judge Langley cred­it­ed Fennell’s tes­ti­mo­ny at the hear­ing over the con­trary tes­ti­mo­ny of a dozen sep­a­rate defense wit­ness­es, find­ing that much of their tes­ti­mo­ny was ​“uncred­i­ble” because the wit­ness­es had sup­pos­ed­ly ​“wait­ed decades to bring forth [their] ​‘rec­ol­lec­tion.’” The state­ments that were in the pos­ses­sion of pros­e­cu­tors at the time of Reed’s tri­al not only bol­ster his ver­sion of events, but also under­mine Langley’s cred­i­bil­i­ty find­ings about the witnesses. 

Langley also reject­ed Reed’s claim that pros­e­cu­tors had pre­sent­ed false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny about the time of Stites’ death, cred­it­ing the tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny of the prosecution’s local foren­sic exam­in­ers over that of Reed’s nation­al­ly known foren­sic experts. Reed’s lawyers argue that the false tes­ti­mo­ny con­cern­ing time of death and the length of time sperm can sur­vive in a person’s body made it appear that Reed had raped Stites just before killing her, when the evi­dence actu­al­ly showed that Reed had con­sen­su­al sex with Stites sev­er­al days before she was mur­dered and that the killing took place at a time Fennell admit­ted he had been alone with her. 

The TCCA has not issued a final rul­ing in the case.