Supreme Court Rejects Texas Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed’s Appeal For Dna Testing

The Supreme Court rejected an entreaty from longtime decease statement inmate Rodney Reed, who has been fighting to person crime segment grounds DNA tested, which he says will clear him.

Reed, who was convicted and sentenced to decease complete nan 1996 execution of Stacey Stites, has agelong maintained his innocence.

For nan 2nd clip successful little than 3 years, nan justices near successful spot a ruling against Reed from nan national appeals tribunal successful New Orleans.

The 3 wide justices dissented.

Nineteen-year-old Stites was strangled to decease by a loop connected her measurement to activity astatine a supermarket successful Bastrop, a agrarian organization astir 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Austin.

Prosecutors person refused to let for DNA testing of nan webbed loop and besides opportunity Reed raped Stipes, but he contends they were having a consensual affair.

Reed has agelong maintained that Stites’ fiance, erstwhile constabulary serviceman Jimmy Fennell, was nan existent killer. Fennell was angry astir nan interracial affair, Reed says. Stites was achromatic and Reed is Black. Fennell, who served clip for intersexual battle and was released from situation successful 2018, has denied sidesplitting Stites.

“The slayer held that loop tight against her pharynx for minutes, and must person near his sweat and tegument cells—and frankincense his DNA—where he gripped nan belt, some connected nan aboveground and heavy wrong nan webbing,” Reed's attorneys wrote.

State and little national courts person truthful acold backed prosecutors' refusal to let for nan testing, which would beryllium paid for by Reed's defense team.

The state's apical criminal appeals tribunal ruled that nan Texas rule connected DNA testing doesn't use to items that whitethorn person been contaminated. But nan authorities routinely uses contaminated grounds successful prosecutions, Reed's lawyers wrote, and successful immoderate event, nan state, not Reed, was responsible for nan handling of nan evidence.

In 2023, nan justices ruled 6-3 to nonstop Reed’s lawsuit backmost to a little tribunal for his law situation to nan state’s rule connected DNA testing.

The rumor earlier nan precocious tribunal past was whether Reed, sentenced to decease much than 25 years ago, waited excessively agelong to record his suit claiming that untested crime-scene grounds would exonerate him. Texas courts and nan national appeals tribunal successful New Orleans ruled that he missed nan deadline.

Reed’s efforts to extremity his execution person received support from specified celebrities arsenic Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey.