Rodney Reed

Rodney Rodell Reed (born December 22, 1967) is an American death row inmate who was convicted on May 29, 1998, by a Bastrop County District Court jury for the April 1996 abduction, rape, and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old resident of Giddings, Texas.

Although Reed initially denied knowing Stites, after his DNA matched semen inside Stites's dead body, Reed said that he was having a clandestine affair with Stites and that they had consensual sex the day before her death. During the penalty phase of the trial, the state argued for capital punishment on the basis of Reed being suspected in the rapes of four women and a 12-year-old and an attack on another woman. Reed was sentenced to death on May 29, 1998, and is incarcerated at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit death row facility in Polk County, Texas.

His conviction and death sentence remain controversial. Reed was scheduled to be executed on November 20, 2019, but doubt over Reed's guilt led to bipartisan support for a stay of his execution from Texas state legislators, as well as numerous celebrities and other public figures. On November 15, 2019, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously recommended that Texas Governor Greg Abbott grant Reed a 120-day reprieve. Later that day, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals indefinitely stayed Reed's execution to review his claims of actual innocence.

Early life Reed's father, Walter, was a native of Bastrop, Texas, and an Air Force veteran while his mother, Sandra, was a nurse. and attended Hirschi High School in Wichita Falls, Texas. The authorities determined that Stites had been beaten, sodomized, and raped before being strangled to death with her belt sometime between 3:00 and 5:00 am. When discovered in the bushes, Stites was wearing a black bra and jeans.

H-E-B offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the capture of her killer, but it went unclaimed.

Stites was buried in her hometown Her brother never recovered from her death and died by suicide in 1997.

Arrest and trial The authorities began to suspect Reed had been involved in the Stites murder based on similarities in the case to an attack on another woman six months later on November 9, 1996. Linda Schlueter, age 19, had agreed to give a ride to a man she met after stopping at a drive-up payphone at a now-closed Long's Star Mart. When she went to drop him off, he attacked her and said he would kill her if she failed to perform sexual acts upon him, but then fled the scene with her vehicle after seeing car lights approaching. Reed was detained by police based on Schlueter's description, and she subsequently picked him out of a photo line-up. The police department had been familiar with him because of prior arrests.

Schlueter's vehicle was found close to where Stites's pickup truck had been abandoned at Bastrop High School. sperm found in Stites' vagina matched to Reed. Local law enforcement already had Reed's DNA on file At the time, he was already in jail on an unrelated charge. His arraignment was scheduled for May 29, 1997, The jury was described as "mostly white", with no African-Americans among the 12 jurors or two alternates. Reed said that he initially denied knowing Stites because it would be best for him not to admit to knowing "a dead white girl" The prosecutors noted that Reed had previously used a similar defense of a clandestine affair when charged with a different aggravated rape in 1987 which had led to him being acquitted. Further, Stites' mother claimed that her daughter and her fiancé "looked happy and in love". This evidence was not presented at Reed's trial. The prosecution put forward the DNA evidence and speculated that Reed may have ambushed Stites at a railroad crossing or a stoplight on her way to work the morning of the murder. or David Lawhon, who had raped and murdered another woman, Mary Ann Ardlt, in Elgin ten days after Stites' murder. Several witnesses recalled that Lawhon had dated a woman they believed to be Stites in the past, although the prosecution suggested they had confused Stites with one of Lawhon's other girlfriends. Other witnesses claimed that Lawhon, after killing Ardlt, had bragged about killing Stites as well. Lawhon himself, serving a 50-year prison sentence for the Ardlt murder, refused to testify citing his right against self-incrimination. During sentencing, prosecutors pushed for the death penalty by arguing that Reed was likely to pose a danger in the future based on a history of similar previous charges. Reed's attorneys have subsequently argued that the broken belt used in the murder has never been tested for DNA and that forensic experts have admitted to making errors in their testimony. On February 23, 2015, his execution was stayed to allow the consideration of further evidence. His execution was later rescheduled for November 20, 2019.

In the weeks preceding the November execution date, celebrities such as Kim Kardashian West, Rihanna, Beyoncé, Meek Mill, Pusha T, Susan Sarandon, Seth Green, and Oprah Winfrey publicly urged Texas Governor Greg Abbott to exonerate Reed or stay his execution. Some, such as Amanda Seales, have rescinded their support for Reed's exoneration after learning more about his history. The case received coverage in major news outlets, and Reed was interviewed on an episode of Dr. Phil, in which host Phil McGraw opined that Reed should not be executed because he had not received a fair trial. By November 14, 2019, a petition to free Reed started by Shaun King had reportedly garnered more than three million signatures.

On February 24, 2020, the Supreme Court announced that it would not be taking up Reed's appeal, citing ongoing litigation in lower courts.

On October 31, 2021, a Bastrop County judge appointed to reexamine the case recommended to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that Reed should not receive a new trial.

On June 28, 2023, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Rodney Reed a new trial. The appeals court wrote in its 7-1 ruling that Reed had not "demonstrated that he is more-likely-than-not innocent". Reed applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari, a request which was rejected without comment in July 2024.

Reed v. Goertz

On April 25, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear Reed's case. Reed argued that the belt used to commit the murder was never tested for DNA and that the state's statute of limitations on when a DNA test could be performed on evidence was unconstitutional, and claimed he should have been permitted to begin federal appeals once all state litigation had been completed, rather than immediately after the initial ruling that denied the testing. The case was set to be heard on October 11, 2022.

During Reed's hearing, the state argued that Reed was merely trying to delay his execution, which Chief Justice John Roberts had expressed concerns over.

On April 19, 2023, SCOTUS sided with Reed on the statute of limitations question in a 6–3 decision.

In popular culture Reed was the subject of the 2006 documentary film State vs. Reed and a 2018 episode of the CNN series Death Row Stories.