The campaign to free Rodney Reed, a Texas death-row inmate, is gaining new attention as his execution date draws near. Reed has spent more than two decades in prison for rape and murder, but new evidence and a botched trial suggest he might be innocent.
and tweeted their support, urging Gov. Greg Abbott to “do the right thing” and grant Reed a stay while new evidence is considered.has warned that Texas is on the “verge of executing an innocent man,” citing an “enormous amount of evidence” in Reed’s favor including botched forensic testimony, racial bias, and the confession of the original suspect. in a wooded area of Bastrop, TX, on April 23, 1996.
Investigators initially suspected Stites’ fiancé, former police officer Jimmy Fennell. Fennell was the last person to see Stites alive and he failed two polygraph tests, but his DNA did not match evidence found at the scene. When DNA came back as a match to Rodney Reed, a Black man who said he was having a consensual sexual relationship with Stites, a white woman, investigators shifted their focus. Reed was convicted of rape and murder by an all-white jury and sentenced to death.
Fennell later served 10 years in prison for the 2007 rape of a woman who was in his custody when he was a police sergeant in Georgetown, TX.
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