New trial is in order for death row inmate Rodney Reed
There has been plenty of drama in a Bastrop courtroom outside Austin since Monday, when an evidentiary hearing began to determine whether Rodney Reed should get a new trial.
Reed, 53, has been on death row since 1998, when he was convicted of the 1996 murder of Stacy Stites, a 19-year-old woman who lived in Giddings and worked at H-E-B. His team has argued that Reed is innocent and that the evidence points to someone else: Jimmy Fennell, who was Stites’ fiancee and, at the time, a Giddings police officer.
This isn’t far-fetched, suggested Charles Wayne Fletcher, a former Bastrop County deputy, who testified that he knew Fennell socially as well as professionally at the time of the murder. On Monday, Fletcher said that he had heard Fennell say at a barbecue, some weeks before Stites’ death, that his fiancee was having an affair with a Black man. By Fletcher’s account, Fennell used a racial slur.
Asked why he didn’t come forward sooner, Fletcher cited concerns for the safety of his family and not wanting to break through the so-called blue wall of silence.
“I couldn’t go against local law enforcement,” he said.
It wasn’t the most dramatic moment of the hearing, which is expected to run through this week and will give Reed’s team a chance to put forward new forensic evidence as well as witness testimony. But it was chilling.
From the beginning, Reed’s case has been a troubling one. He was convicted largely on the basis of DNA evidence, after his semen was found on Stites’ body. But that could be explained if the two were having a consensual affair, as Reed contends; several witnesses who knew Stites have come forward to say that was their impression, too.
Then there is some important context here regarding race. Reed is Black, and was convicted by an all-white jury. Stites was white. Fennell is white too, and the law enforcement officers who investigated Stites’ murder considered him a person of interest in the immediate aftermath of her killing.
Although Fennell was never charged with Stites’ death, his subsequent career in law enforcement was troubled, to put it mildly. In 2007 he was convicted of kidnapping and raping a woman in his custody while working as a police officer in Georgetown; he was sentenced to 10 years in prison. And in a 2019 affidavit, another former inmate, Arthur Snow, alleged that Fennell con
fessed to murdering Stites. This came as Fennell was seeking protection from Snow, who was, at the time, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Snow reiterated these claims at the hearing Tuesday.
Another former inmate who knew Fennell, Michael Bordelon, testified that Fennell made similar statements to him.
None of this means that Fennell is guilty of Stites’ murder. Like everyone else, he’s entitled to the presumption of innocence. And you may not want to put much weight on the testimony of jailhouse informants.
However, the facts as we know them leave no doubt about why Reed’s lawyers are requesting a new trial — and that their request is appropriate.
Reed was set to be executed on Nov. 20, 2019, and in the weeks leading up to that date, there was a nationwide push to call attention to his claims of innocence, as well as new evidence that had come to
light since his original trial. Celebrities ranging from Beyoncé to Chuck Woolery — the original host of TV’s “Wheel of Fortune” — called on Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, to intervene, or at least give Reed a chance to make his case again. Several members of the Texas Legislature reached the same conclusion after reviewing the facts at hand.
“Executing Rodney Reed without certainty about his guilt erodes public trust — not only in capital punishment, but in Texas justice itself,” wrote a group of 16 state senators, eight of them Republicans, in a letter to Abbott and David Gutiérrez, the chair of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, highlighted the “remarkable bipartisan coalition” in support of a new trial.
“I believe capital punishment can be justice for the very worst murderers, but if there is credible evidence there’s a real chance the defendant is innocent, that evidence should be weighed carefully,” he observed in a tweet.
None of this spurred Abbott to action.
He has, in general, been reluctant to use his powers to extend leniency to people convicted of serious crimes.
But on Nov. 15, the Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously in favor of a 120-day reprieve. Hours later, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Reed an indefinite stay of execution and sent the case back to trial court to determine whether Reed deserves a new trial.
“Our evidence is not new and not anything we haven’t been saying for 25 years,” said Lisa Tanner, of the Texas attorney general’s office, in her opening arguments for the state on Monday.
That’s true, as far as the state’s case.
There are nonetheless real and persistent questions about Reed’s guilt. And such questions, in a death penalty case, should be treated with the utmost gravity. Reed’s life is at stake, as is our commitment to seeing justice served.