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Stop the legal lynching of Rodney Reed
The State of Texas is about to execute an innocent man. Here are four reasons Reed should get a new trial.
CONTENT WARNING: This article contains some descriptions of violent crimes that might not be suitable for victims of violence and sexual trauma.
Jim Crow justice is alive and well in the 21st century. If a stay isn’t granted, the State of Texas will execute Rodney Reed on Nov. 20 for a murder he did not commit. The case is a throwback to the travesties of due process that were all too common in the Deep South at the height of white supremacy: Reed, a black man, was convicted by an all-white jury for allegedly raping and murdering a white woman.
Over two decades ago, Reed was charged with the murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas, but evidence has since piled up implicating Stites’ fiance Jimmy Fennell, a former police officer, who was sentenced to 10 years in 2007 for arresting a woman and raping her at gunpoint.
The state’s case hinged on a single piece of physical evidence connecting Reed to the murder: semen collected from Stites’ body that matched his DNA. However, Reed has long maintained that the two were having a secret affair, which has been corroborated by more than 10 different witnesses, only two of which were…
