Three U.S. Supreme Court Justices Decry ​“Inexplicable” Texas Refusal to Test DNA in Rodney Reed Case

Texas pros­e­cu­tors sent Rodney Reed to death row for the 1996 mur­der of Stacey Stites, whom they argued was stran­gled with her own leather belt. Yet for over a decade, state offi­cials have fought Mr. Reed’s requests to test that belt for the killer’s DNA. In 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Reed’s law­suit seek­ing the test was time­ly, and last year it struck down Texas’ attempts to block DNA test­ing in two oth­er cap­i­tal cas­es. However, on March 23, the Court refused to hear Mr. Reed’s most recent appeal after Texas courts again denied test­ing, this time on new grounds. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dis­sent­ed from the denial of cer­tio­rari in a sear­ing opin­ion that high­light­ed the racial bias in Mr. Reed’s case, the evi­dence cast­ing seri­ous doubt on his guilt, and the ​“inex­plic­a­ble” refusal of state offi­cials and low­er courts to per­mit DNA test­ing that could con­firm the iden­ti­ty of Ms. Stites’ killer. 

Texas law allows cap­i­tal pris­on­ers to seek DNA test­ing of evi­dence dur­ing their post­con­vic­tion appeals, but state pros­e­cu­tors have con­sis­tent­ly fought these efforts with pro­ce­dur­al objec­tions — even when, as in Mr. Reed’s case, the pris­on­er offers to pay for the test­ing. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have con­sis­tent­ly ruled in favor of the state using nar­row inter­pre­ta­tions of the law. As a result, though Texas leg­is­la­tors sought to strength­en the legal path­way for pris­on­ers to pur­sue inno­cence claims using foren­sic and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, state pros­e­cu­tors have suc­ceed­ed in block­ing that path in vir­tu­al­ly every cap­i­tal case. 

Mr. Reed argues that DNA test­ing is cru­cial in his case because of a strong alter­nate sus­pect: Ms. Stites’ fiancé Jimmy Fennell, a local police offi­cer. Mr. Fennell lat­er plead­ed guilty and served a decade in prison for kid­nap­ping and alleged­ly rap­ing a woman he had arrest­ed. While Mr. Reed’s semen was found in Ms. Stites’ body and he was foren­si­cal­ly linked to oth­er sex­u­al assault cas­es, he has long insist­ed that Mr. Fennell mur­dered Ms. Stites because she and Mr. Reed were hav­ing a con­sen­su­al affair. Prosecutors ridiculed that the­o­ry to the all-white jury that con­vict­ed Mr. Reed, rely­ing on what Mr. Reed’s attor­neys called ​“a lin­ger­ing prej­u­dice that con­sen­su­al, inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ships did not hap­pen in rur­al Bastrop, Texas in 1996.” However, sev­er­al wit­ness­es have since offered evi­dence sup­port­ing Mr. Reed’s claims — includ­ing state­ments made to police or pros­e­cu­tors before tri­al that were nev­er turned over to the defense. 

The dis­sent­ing Supreme Court jus­tices high­light­ed some of the trou­bling evi­dence impli­cat­ing Mr. Fennell. A police col­league recalled that a month before Ms. Stites’ mur­der, Mr. Fennell told him that she was ​“f***king a n****r.” At her funer­al, accord­ing to a dif­fer­ent police offi­cer, Mr. Fennell said that Ms. Stites ​“got what she deserved.” And a for­mer Aryan Brotherhood mem­ber wrote in a sworn affi­davit that while both were incar­cer­at­ed, Mr. Fennell said that he ​“had to kill [his] n****r‑loving fiancé[e],” in what the man per­ceived as an attempt to ​“impress…and earn him cred­i­bil­i­ty with the Aryan Brotherhood.” Witnesses have also said that Ms. Stites and Mr. Reed appeared close, that Ms. Stites acknowl­edged the affair with Mr. Reed, and that Mr. Fennell had been vio­lent towards her. 

Yet after the Supreme Court held in 2023 that Mr. Reed’s DNA law­suit could move for­ward, Texas offi­cials again refused to test the mur­der weapon, this time cit­ing a statu­to­ry require­ment that the evi­dence be ​“non-con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.” The belt has been in the state’s cus­tody since the inves­ti­ga­tion began. At tri­al, it was thrown into a box with oth­er exhibits and han­dled by attor­neys, jurors, and oth­er offi­cials with­out gloves. Texas offi­cials argued that this was ​“con­sis­tent with the stan­dards of the day” — mean­ing that under the state’s ratio­nale, most cap­i­tal pris­on­ers sen­tenced in the same era as Mr. Reed would be denied mod­ern DNA test­ing due to the state’s own mis­han­dling of evidence. 

Mr. Reed argued that the non­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion require­ment vio­lat­ed his due process rights for three rea­sons. It is fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair to hold con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of evi­dence against a pris­on­er when the state is respon­si­ble for the evi­dence, his attor­neys said, and to hold post­con­vic­tion pris­on­ers to a high­er bur­den than tri­al pros­e­cu­tors, who fre­quent­ly rely on con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed DNA evi­dence to win con­vic­tions. A fed­er­al dis­trict court reject­ed these argu­ments and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision. 

However, Justice Sotomayor wrote, ​“the Fifth Circuit did not square­ly con­front” Mr. Reed’s third argu­ment: ​“that the non­con­t­a­m­i­na­tion require­ment itself serves no legit­i­mate pur­pose because DNA test­ing is now capa­ble of gen­er­at­ing accu­rate results even when the evi­dence has been con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed.” Mr. Reed offered the tes­ti­mo­ny of a for­mer lead foren­sic sci­en­tist for the state, who said that even in the ​“worst-case sce­nario of devel­op­ing the most com­plex, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed DNA pro­file,” state ana­lysts ​“could accu­rate­ly include or exclude [Mr. Reed] or Mr. Fennell with above 95% accu­ra­cy.” The three dis­sent­ing jus­tices said they would have vacat­ed the deci­sion below and remand­ed for the Fifth Circuit to prop­er­ly address that argument. 

“It is inex­plic­a­ble why the Bastrop County District Attorney’s Office refus­es to allow DNA test­ing of the belt that was used to kill Stites, despite the very sub­stan­tial pos­si­bil­i­ty that such test­ing could excul­pate Reed and iden­ti­fy the real killer,” the jus­tices wrote. ​“It is also inex­plic­a­ble why the courts below did not pro­ceed with more cau­tion and care­ful­ly con­sid­er each of Reed’s argu­ments, espe­cial­ly giv­en that his claim impli­cates the ​‘con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly intol­er­a­ble’ pos­si­bil­i­ty of the ​‘exe­cu­tion of a[n]…innocent per­son.’” They con­clud­ed with a lamen­ta­tion that ​“the State will like­ly exe­cute Reed with­out the world ever know­ing whether Reed’s or Fennell’s DNA is on the mur­der weapon, even though a sim­ple DNA test could reveal that information.”