GIST: "Three months after attorneys presented and picked apart new evidence in death row inmate Rodney Reed's case, both sides on Monday gave their closing arguments about whether that evidence should upend his rape and murder conviction in the 1996 killing of Stacey Stites.
Reed's attorneys argued before state District Judge J.D. Langley that new witnesses and forensic analysis bolster theories that Stites was having an affair with Reed and that Stites could have been killed when she was with her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell. Prosecutors countered that none of this evidence changes the facts of the case that led to Reed's conviction.
'This is all subjective': Forensic evidence picked apart again in Rodney Reed hearing
Langley said he hopes to make his recommendation to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals before the end of the month, and the appeals court will decide whether Reed's conviction should stand, he should go free or he deserves a new trial.
Reed, 53, has failed to get his conviction overturned in multiple attempts in federal and state courts, but his appeals have stayed his execution twice.
New witnesses who took the stand in July included Charles Fletcher, a former member of the Bastrop County sheriff's office, who said that Fennell told him a month before Stites' murder that she was having an affair with a Black man.
Arthur Snow Jr. said that during a prison yard conversation Fennell admitted to killing Stites, with Fennell saying, "I had to kill my (n-word)-loving fiancée." The alleged conversation occurred while Fennell was serving time in prison for an unrelated kidnapping and sexual assault conviction.
Prosecutors said because many of the new witnesses didn't come forward for years, or decades in some cases, judges should be skeptical of whether they're correctly remembering these conversations.
"Mr. Fletcher said he didn’t think about coming forward until his wife had done some research on the case," Assistant Texas Attorney General Travis Bragg pointed out in court Monday.
New evidence presented in July was forensic, with the defense bringing to the stand multiple scientists who said Stites' time of death could have been during times that Fennell testified he was with her, and not only during a 3 to 5 a.m. window that experts gave in the late 1990s.
New experts also said intact sperm cells found on Stites' body could have been deposited much earlier than a jury was told during Reed's trial.
"A new jury, hearing this evidence, would have a reasonable doubt in this case," said Jane Pucher, one of Reed's attorneys with the Innocence Project, a criminal justice advocacy group.
Defense attorneys on Monday reiterated their argument made in July that it was Fennell, not Reed, who killed Stites. Fennell has denied that accusation on the stand.
In 2008, Fennell pleaded guilty to kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman after responding to her call for help in his role as a police officer in Georgetown. Fennell served a 10-year sentence in prison and was released in 2018.
Prosecutors countered that if judges consider Fennell's past, they should also consider Reed's. Reed was considered a suspect in the sexual assaults of six other women, according to investigators. He was only charged in one case and was acquitted.
A woman testified last summer that Reed punched her and dragged her by the hair in 1996 after she agreed to give him a ride home. He asked her for oral sex, she said.
"I responded, 'You will have to kill me before you get anything from me,’” the woman said. "He said, ‘I guess I will have to kill you.’”
The woman said she kept punching Reed until she was able to escape from her truck and run for help.
Outside the courthouse Monday, Stites' sister Debra Oliver accused Reed of being a serial rapist.
"I think the state did a great job of proving that there's never been any evidence of a relationship between Rodney and Stacey," Oliver said. "I think they've also done a great job of saying that to prove actual innocence, they would have to bring in all of the other cases against him. ... The only way you can look at this case is to look at all the evidence against him."
Reed's brother, Rodrick Reed, said defense attorneys have proved his brother is innocent.
"All we ask for is a fair trial," he said. "My brother never had that from the beginning. It was a Jim Crow trial straight out the gate. And so, if this time we can get a fair trial, the evidence will free Rodney Reed."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2021/10/19/attorneys-make-closing-arguments-rodney-reed-bastrop-hearing/8508540002/
