Supporters Rally for New Trial for Rodney Reed, Sentenced to Death by All-White Jury in ​‘Jim Crow Trial’ in Texas

Supporters of Rodney Reed (pic­tured) are call­ing for a new tri­al for the Texas death-row pris­on­er sen­tenced to death in 1998 by an all-white jury in a racial­ly charged tri­al. On September 10, 2019, Reed’s fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers protest­ed Texas’ death penal­ty out­side the governor’s man­sion in Austin. Their plea for a new tri­al based on evi­dence of his inno­cence has been joined by a grow­ing cho­rus of sup­port­ers, which include the Innocence Project, the victim’s cousin, Texas state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Vikki Goodwin, and Sister Helen Prejean. 

Reed, who is black, faces a November 20, 2019 exe­cu­tion date for the 1996 mur­der of a 19-year-old white woman, Stacey Stites, with whom he was hav­ing a secret affair. He has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence. Reed has argued that Stites was mur­dered and that he was framed by her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, an Austin-area police offi­cer who was lat­er fired and jailed based on alle­ga­tions that he had kid­napped and raped a woman while on duty. In August, the Innocence Project filed a civ­il rights law­suit in fed­er­al court seek­ing DNA test­ing of evi­dence from the crime, includ­ing the belt that was used to strangle Stites.

Sandra Reed, Rodney’s moth­er, has been advo­cat­ing on his behalf for years. ​“He nev­er had a chance,” she told the sup­port­ers at the ral­ly. In an inter­view with The Guardian, she said “[r]ace was a big fac­tor in this case. A ​‘Jim Crow tri­al’, an all-white jury, none of his peers.” Rodney Reed has said he and Stites had kept their affair secret because it would have caused a scan­dal in their small Texas town and because Stites feared Fennell’s reac­tion if he found out.

According to the Innocence Project court fil­ing, wit­ness­es said they had heard Fennell on sev­er­al occa­sions threat­en to kill Stites if she cheat­ed on him, includ­ing say­ing ​“he would stran­gle her with a belt.” The law­suit says that, in addi­tion to the sex­u­al abuse charges that led to his con­vic­tion, Fennell had been the sub­ject of sev­er­al com­plaints about ​“racial bias and use of exces­sive force at the Giddings police depart­ment where he worked.” The Innocence Project plead­ing says Fennell gave ​“incon­sis­tent state­ments” about his activ­i­ties on the night of the mur­der. According to the plead­ing, ​“promi­nent foren­sic pathol­o­gists” have con­clud­ed Fennell’s tes­ti­mo­ny that Stites was abduct­ed and killed on her way to work is ​“med­ical­ly and scientifically impossible.” 

As Reed’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion date approach­es, he has received sup­port from some promi­nent and unusu­al sources. Heather Campbell Stobbs, a cousin of Stacey Stites, has pub­licly expressed doubts about Reed’s guilt. ​“Too many things point to the inep­ti­tude of law enforce­ment when they first start­ed work­ing the case,” she said. 

Texas state rep­re­sen­ta­tive Vikki Goodwin is call­ing for a retri­al, or for Reed to be removed from death row. ​“I don’t think any­one can say he is guilty with­out a shad­ow of a doubt,” Goodwin said. ​“I don’t believe we should car­ry out the death penal­ty when there’s doubt about the truth of the case.” She point­ed to oth­er cas­es of inno­cence, say­ing, ​“I believe his­to­ry has shown that in too many cas­es what seems to be true and just has turned out not to be so when new infor­ma­tion or new sci­en­tif­ic advances occur.” 

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and the recent­ly released River of Fire, has also spo­ken out on Reed’s behalf. ​“Racial dis­crim­i­na­tion infects the death penal­ty sys­tem as a whole and we see it in this case,” her spokesper­son, Griffin Hardy, said. ​“It’s dis­turb­ing to see these kind of bias­es and prej­u­dices that can ulti­mate­ly cost some­one their life.”