The U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to review Rodney Reed’s murder case, which has been contentious due to Reed’s longstanding claims of innocence. Reed who was convicted in 1998 for the murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas, but doubts about his guilt have persisted. In 2019, his execution essentially being put on pause, but subsequent rulings denied him a new trial. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear his appeal doesn’t mean his execution is imminent, as other legal avenues, including DNA testing of crime scene evidence, are still being investigated. Reed’s legal team remains hopeful about proving his innocence.
Although Rodney Reed initially denied knowing Stacey Stites, after his DNA matched semen found inside her body, Reed claimed they were having a clandestine affair and had consensual sex the day before her death. During the trial’s penalty phase, the state pushed for capital punishment, citing Reed’s suspected involvement in the rapes of four women and a 12-year-old girl, as well as an attack on another woman. Reed was subsquently sentenced to death on May 29, 1998, and is now being incarcerated at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit death row facility in Polk County, Texas.
Reed’s conviction and death sentence have been highly controversial. He was anticipated to be executed on November 20, 2019, but a lot of doubt over his guilt garnered bipartisan support from Texas legislators, celebrities, and public figures for a stay of execution. On November 15, 2019, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously recommended a 120-day reprieve, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed his execution to review his claims of innocence. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court further delayed his execution, authorizing Reed to seek DNA testing on the murder weapon.
Stacey Stites Murder: A Cold Case with Lingering Doubts
Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old resident of Giddings, Texas, was found dead on April 23, 1996. Police received a call at 3:11 pm reporting her unidentified body in bushes near a dirt road behind Bastrop High School in Bastrop, Texas. Earlier, a pickup truck belonging to Stites’ fiancé, which she regularly drove to work, was found parked near the school. 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. Her body was partially burned and discovered wearing a black bra and jeans, with part of her belt nearby and her shirt found close to her body.
Stites lived in Giddings with her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell Jr., a local police officer, whom she was set to marry in three weeks. Fennell claimed he last saw her around 3:00 am after they showered together and she left for her job at the H-E-B grocery store in Bastrop. Bastrop High School was on the route from their home to her workplace. When Stites did not arrive for her 3:30 am shift, the store contacted her mother, who then alerted the police.
H-E-B offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to her killer, but it went unclaimed. On July 12, 1996, an anonymous woman called the authorities, suggesting her son might have been with Stites before her death, but the call could not be traced. Stites was buried in her hometown of Corpus Christi on April 26, 1996. Tragically, her brother never recovered from her death and died by suicide in 1997.
Source:
McCullough, J. (2021, November 1). Rejecting claims of innocence, judge says Texas Death Row inmate Rodney Reed should not get a new trial. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2021/11/01/rodney-reed-texas-death-penalty/
Wikimedia Foundation. (2024, June 27). Rodney Reed. Wikipedia. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Reed
YouTube. (n.d.). Kvue. YouTube. https://youtube.com/@kvuetv?si=i5rdQvk71TV4SYxr