According to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), Rodney Reed was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites in Texas, where prosecutors argued that he strangled Stites with her own belt. Reed has repeatedly denied the accusations against him and has sought DNA testing of the belt to identify the true killer, a request Texas officials have resisted for more than a decade. Texas state prosecutors have fought the efforts of Reed and others in similar cases, even though Reed offered to pay for the testing.
In similar cases, according to the DPIC, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against Texas’ arguments that prisoners lack standing to seek testing. However, in 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Reed, affirming that his lawsuit seeking DNA testing was filed on time. Yet, on March 23, the court refused to hear Reed’s latest appeal after Texas courts again denied testing on new grounds, prompting a strong dissent from Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The dissenting justices highlighted possible racial bias in Reed’s conviction, noting the all-white jury that convicted him. They also pointed to significant evidence casting doubt on his guilt, according to the DPIC.
One of Reed’s key arguments, emphasized by the dissent, is the existence of another suspect: Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, a former police officer with a documented history of misconduct. Fennell later pleaded guilty to kidnapping and raping a woman he had arrested, according to the DPIC. He was also reported to have made racist remarks at Stites’ funeral, allegedly saying she was “f*king a n**r” and had “gotten what she deserved.”
Furthermore, a former Aryan Brotherhood member wrote in a sworn affidavit that while both were incarcerated, Fennell said he “had to kill [his] n****r-loving fiancé[e],” which the witness interpreted as an attempt to “impress … and earn him credibility with the Aryan Brotherhood,” according to the DPIC.
Witnesses have since corroborated the alleged relationship between Reed and Stites, the DPIC reported. Some statements supporting Reed were known to authorities before trial but were not disclosed to the defense. Additional troubling evidence regarding Fennell includes racist remarks about Stites’ relationship, statements implying she “got what she deserved,” a jailhouse confession to killing his fiancée to gain credibility with a white supremacist group, and reports of prior violence toward Stites.
According to the DPIC, Texas now argues that the belt has been contaminated by the DNA of attorneys, jurors and others who handled it during the case without gloves. The state maintains that such handling was consistent with past standards. However, critics argue that this reasoning would effectively block DNA testing in many older cases due to contamination caused by the state itself.
The Supreme Court described the refusal to test the belt as “inexplicable,” according to the DPIC. DNA testing could exonerate Reed and identify the real perpetrator, but without testing, the truth may never be known before a possible execution.
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