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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the denial of certiorari in a searing opinion that highlighted the racial bias in Mr. Reed’s case, the evidence casting serious doubt on his guilt, and the “inexplicable” refusal of state officials and lower courts to permit DNA testing that could confirm the identity of Ms. Stites’ killer."
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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The belt has been in the state’s custody since the investigation began. At trial, it was thrown into a box with other exhibits and handled by attorneys, jurors, and other officials without gloves. Texas officials argued that this was “consistent with the standards of the day” — meaning that under the state’s rationale, most capital prisoners sentenced in the same era as Mr. Reed would be denied modern DNA testing due to the state’s own mishandling of evidence. Texas law allows capital prisoners to seek DNA testing of evidence during their postconviction appeals, but state prosecutors have consistently fought these efforts with procedural objections — even when, as in Mr. Reed’s case, the prisoner offers to pay for the testing.
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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Mr. Reed is not the only death-sentenced prisoner claiming innocence who has had the state’s mishandling of evidence held against him. Testing found no trace of Marcellus Williams’ DNA on the knife used as the murder weapon — but it did find the DNA of multiple officials, including the original trial prosecutor, who admitted to handling the knife ungloved. Due to the contamination, the Missouri Supreme Court held that Mr. Williams’ team had failed to demonstrate his actual innocence. He was executed in Missouri on September 24, 2024, over the opposition of the local prosecutor, the victim’s husband, and multiple jurors who originally sentenced him."
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PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "“It is inexplicable why the Bastrop County District Attorney’s Office refuses to allow DNA testing of the belt that was used to kill Stites, despite the very substantial possibility that such testing could exculpate Reed and identify the real killer,” the justices wrote. “It is also inexplicable why the courts below did not proceed with more caution and carefully consider each of Reed’s arguments, especially given that his claim implicates the ‘constitutionally intolerable’ possibility of the ‘execution of a[n]…innocent person.’” They concluded with a lamentation that “the State will likely execute Reed without the world ever knowing whether Reed’s or Fennell’s DNA is on the murder weapon, even though a simple DNA test could reveal that information.”
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COMMENTARY: "Three U.S. Supreme Court Justices Decry “Inexplicable” Texas Refusal to Test DNA in Rodney Reed Case," by Author Leah Roemer, published by The Death Penalty Information Center, on March 25, 2026."
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GIST: "Texas prosecutors sent Rodney Reed to death row for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, whom they argued was strangled with her own leather belt.
Yet for over a decade, state officials have fought Mr. Reed’s requests to test that belt for the killer’s DNA.
In 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled that Mr. Reed’s lawsuit seeking the test was timely, and last year it struck down Texas’ attempts to block DNA testing in two other capital cases.
However, on March 23, the Court refused to hear Mr. Reed’s most recent appeal after Texas courts again denied testing, this time on new grounds.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the denial of certiorari in a searing opinion that highlighted the racial bias in Mr. Reed’s case, the evidence casting serious doubt on his guilt, and the “inexplicable” refusal of state officials and lower courts to permit DNA testing that could confirm the identity of Ms. Stites’ killer.
Texas law allows capital prisoners to seek DNA testing of evidence during their postconviction appeals, but state prosecutors have consistently fought these efforts with procedural objections — even when, as in Mr. Reed’s case, the prisoner offers to pay for the testing.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals have consistently ruled in favor of the state using narrow interpretations of the law.
As a result, though Texas legislators sought to strengthen the legal pathway for prisoners to pursue innocence claims using forensic and technological advancements, state prosecutors have succeeded in blocking that path in virtually every capital case.
Texas Officials Stop at Nothing to Block DNA Testing
Texas’ refusal to grant DNA testing in postconviction capital cases has generated multiple disputes at the Supreme Court.
One of the state’s arguments was that lawsuits seeking testing should be dismissed at the outset for lack of standing, which requires a reasonable likelihood that a favorable court decision would address the problem.
The state argued that even when faced with a court order for DNA testing, the district attorney might refuse to obey, resulting in an “unavailable” remedy such that prisoners did not have standing to sue.
The Court firmly rejected this strained argument in Mr. Reed’s 2023 case and again in the case of Ruben Gutierrez in June 2025. “That a prosecutor might eventually find another reason…to deny a prisoner’s request for DNA testing does not vitiate his standing to argue that the cited reasons violated his rights under the Due Process Clause,” the Court held.
The Court also reversed a lower court ruling against David Wood in light of the Gutierrez decision (though like Mr. Reed, Mr. Wood’s appeal was later denied Supreme Court review once the lower court found a new reason to reject it).
Mr. Reed argues that DNA testing is crucial in his case because of a strong alternate suspect: Ms. Stites’ fiancé Jimmy Fennell, a local police officer.
Mr. Fennell later pleaded guilty and served a decade in prison for kidnapping and allegedly raping a woman he had arrested.
While Mr. Reed’s semen was found in Ms. Stites’ body and he was forensically linked to other sexual assault cases, he has long insisted that Mr. Fennell murdered Ms. Stites because she and Mr. Reed were having a consensual affair.
Prosecutors ridiculed that theory to the all-white jury that convicted Mr. Reed, relying on what Mr. Reed’s attorneys called “a lingering prejudice that consensual, interracial relationships did not happen in rural Bastrop, Texas in 1996.”
However, several witnesses have since offered evidence supporting Mr. Reed’s claims — including statements made to police or prosecutors before trial that were never turned over to the defense.
The dissenting Supreme Court justices highlighted some of the troubling evidence implicating Mr. Fennell.
A police colleague recalled that a month before Ms. Stites’ murder, Mr. Fennell told him that she was “f***king a n****r.”
At her funeral, according to a different police officer, Mr. Fennell said that Ms. Stites “got what she deserved.”
And a former Aryan Brotherhood member wrote in a sworn affidavit that while both were incarcerated, Mr. Fennell said that he “had to kill [his] n****r‑loving fiancé[e],” in what the man perceived as an attempt to “impress…and earn him credibility with the Aryan Brotherhood.”
Witnesses have also said that Ms. Stites and Mr. Reed appeared close, that Ms. Stites acknowledged the affair with Mr. Reed, and that Mr. Fennell had been violent towards her.
Yet after the Supreme Court held in 2023 that Mr. Reed’s DNA lawsuit could move forward, Texas officials again refused to test the murder weapon, this time citing a statutory requirement that the evidence be “non-contaminated.”
The belt has been in the state’s custody since the investigation began. At trial, it was thrown into a box with other exhibits and handled by attorneys, jurors, and other officials without gloves.
Texas officials argued that this was “consistent with the standards of the day” — meaning that under the state’s rationale, most capital prisoners sentenced in the same era as Mr. Reed would be denied modern DNA testing due to the state’s own mishandling of evidence.
State Contaminates Evidence, Prisoners Suffer Consequences
Mr. Reed is not the only death-sentenced prisoner claiming innocence who has had the state’s mishandling of evidence held against him.
Testing found no trace of Marcellus Williams’ DNA on the knife used as the murder weapon — but it did find the DNA of multiple officials, including the original trial prosecutor, who admitted to handling the knife ungloved.
Due to the contamination, the Missouri Supreme Court held that Mr. Williams’ team had failed to demonstrate his actual innocence.
He was executed in Missouri on September 24, 2024, over the opposition of the local prosecutor, the victim’s husband, and multiple jurors who originally sentenced him.
Mr. Reed argued that the noncontamination requirement violated his due process rights for three reasons.
It is fundamentally unfair to hold contamination of evidence against a prisoner when the state is responsible for the evidence, his attorneys said, and to hold postconviction prisoners to a higher burden than trial prosecutors, who frequently rely on contaminated DNA evidence to win convictions.
A federal district court rejected these arguments and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision.
However, Justice Sotomayor wrote, “the Fifth Circuit did not squarely confront” Mr. Reed’s third argument: “that the noncontamination requirement itself serves no legitimate purpose because DNA testing is now capable of generating accurate results even when the evidence has been contaminated.”
Mr. Reed offered the testimony of a former lead forensic scientist for the state, who said that even in the “worst-case scenario of developing the most complex, contaminated DNA profile,” state analysts “could accurately include or exclude [Mr. Reed] or Mr. Fennell with above 95% accuracy.”
The three dissenting justices said they would have vacated the decision below and remanded for the Fifth Circuit to properly address that argument.
“It is inexplicable why the Bastrop County District Attorney’s Office refuses to allow DNA testing of the belt that was used to kill Stites, despite the very substantial possibility that such testing could exculpate Reed and identify the real killer,” the justices wrote.
“It is also inexplicable why the courts below did not proceed with more caution and carefully consider each of Reed’s arguments, especially given that his claim implicates the ‘constitutionally intolerable’ possibility of the ‘execution of a[n]…innocent person.’”
They concluded with a lamentation that “the State will likely execute Reed without the world ever knowing whether Reed’s or Fennell’s DNA is on the murder weapon, even though a simple DNA test could reveal that information.”
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan: Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
