Rodney Reed and his legal team argue that his trial was marred by unexamined evidence and false scientific claims
TEXAS'S DEATH-PENALTY machinery is humming. Last year, the state carried out more than half of America's executions. So far this year, six out of 15 have been carried out in the state and that share will increase. A further nine inmates on death row areto die in Texas in 2019.
On November 20th it will be the turn of Rodney Reed, a 51-year-old black man who was found guilty of killing Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old white woman, in 1996. Mr Reed has been on Texas’s crowded death row since 1998. At the trial, the main evidence connecting Mr Reed to the crime was strands of his DNA found inside Ms Stites’s body.
Mr Reed’s lawyers also observe that key testimony from a forensic scientist attesting to the timeline of Ms Stites’s death was later found to be false and that eye witnesses had seen Mr Reed and Ms Stites together “at various times prior to her murder”, apparently supporting his claim that they had been in a relationship. All of this may cast doubt on the validity of Mr Reed’s conviction, but none of it proves his innocence.
For years, Mr Reed’s lawyers have been arguing that their client should get a new trial in which additional evidence—including DNA analysis of previously overlooked crime-scene items—could be introduced. During the original trial, neither Ms Stites’s clothing nor the murder weapon, the belt, was analysed for genetic material. But these garments and objects remain safely stored, have not been tampered with or compromised and could, plausibly, if tested, exonerate Mr Reed.
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