[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS

[Rick Halperin]

TEXAS:

NEW DOUBTS ABOUT CONVICTION AS EXECUTION SET

Rodney Reed is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 5 March.  He was 
sentenced to death in 1998 for
a murder he says he did not commit. Three leading forensic experts have 
added their voices to the
serious doubts about the reliability of his conviction.

View the full Urgent Action, including case information, addresses and 
sample messages, here.

The body of 19-year-old Stacey Stites was found near a road in Bastrop 
County in rural central Texas
on the afternoon of 23 April 1996. She had been reported missing that 
morning after failing to turn
up for work. Initially the prime suspect was her fiancé until, nearly a 
year after the murder, DNA
testing of semen from the body was matched to the DNA of Rodney Reed. He 
was charged, convicted and
sentenced to death. He had initially denied knowing the victim, but then 
said that they had been in
a consensual intimate relationship. He has said that he initially kept it 
from police because he
feared becoming a suspect “if I told police we had been dating”. Rodney 
Reed is black, Stacey Stites
was white, and her fiancé was a white police officer.

New expert opinion and other evidence now calls into question the state’s 
theory of the crime and
the forensic evidence on which it was based. The prosecution had argued 
that Rodney Reed’s DNA had
been left during a rape contemporaneous with the murder, which the state 
said had occurred around
3am on 23 April 1996. The state’s forensic expert supported this theory at 
the trial. Since then, he
has signed a statement that his testimony was misused by the prosecution 
and that his estimate
“should not have been used at trial as an accurate statement of when Ms 
Stites died”, and that the
semen could have been left more than 24 hours before the victim’s death, 
consistent with Reed’s
claim of consensual sex in that time frame. Three leading forensic 
pathologists have also concluded
from their review of all available materials that there is no forensic 
evidence that Stacey Stites
had been sexually assaulted at the time of her murder rather than having 
engaged in consensual
intercourse 24 hours or more before her murder. They concluded that she 
was killed before midnight
on 22 April 1996, and her body kept face down for some four to six hours 
before being transported to
the location where it was found. One of the experts has concluded that the 
forensic evidence renders
the state’s theory about time of death “medically and scientifically 
impossible”. Another has
concluded “beyond a reasonable degree of medical certainty that, based on 
all of the forensic
evidence, Mr Reed is scheduled to be executed for a crime he did not 
commit”.

Two people have also recently signed statements that they were aware of 
the relationship between
Rodney Reed and Stacey Stites. Previous witnesses who attested to the 
relationship were deemed
unreliable by the courts because of their relationship to the defendant or 
for other reasons. The
two who recently signed these statements are former work colleagues of the 
victim. More than a dozen
relatives of Stacey Stites have also stated that they do not believe 
Rodney Reed is guilty of her
murder.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

In 2012, a US magistrate judge recommended after reviewing the case that 
Rodney Reed’s habeas corpus
petition, which had been pending before him for 10 years while other 
litigation was in train, be
denied by the US District Court, which then did so. The magistrate judge 
wrote: “Reed was never a
suspect. Never, that is, until the sperm found in Stacey Stites body was 
discovered to be a match to
Reed’s DNA… Without reliable evidence demonstrating that this happened 
consensually, the DNA
evidence effectively condemns Reed”. The new expert forensic evidence 
would appear to call the
magistrate judge’s recommendation into serious question. UN safeguards 
guaranteeing protection of
the rights of those facing the death penalty state: “Capital punishment 
may be imposed only when the
guilt of the person charged is based upon clear and convincing evidence 
leaving no room for an
alternative explanation of the facts”. The new expert opinion of the three 
forensic pathologists,
coupled with post-conviction clarification by the state’s forensic expert 
of his the trial
testimony, and the additional statements from the victim’s co-workers, 
open “room for an alternative
explanation of the facts”.

View the full Urgent Action here.

Name: Rodney Rodell Reed (m)
Issues: Imminent execution, Death penalty, Legal concern
UA: 39/15
Issue Date: 19 February 2015
Country: USA

Please let us know if you took action so that we can track our impact!

EITHER send a short email to uan at aiusa.org with "UA 39/15" in the subject 
line, and include in the
body of the email the number of letters and/or emails you sent.

OR fill out this short online form to let us know how you took action.

Thank you for taking action! Please check with the AIUSA Urgent Action 
Office if sending appeals
after the below date. If you receive a response from a government 
official, please forward it to us
at uan at aiusa.org or to the Urgent Action Office address below.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Please write immediately in English or your own language, referencing 
inmate No. 999271 in your
appeals:
  *  Calling for clemency for Rodney Reed;
  *  Noting the new expert and other evidence supporting his consistent 
claim of innocence;
  *  Noting the irrevocable nature of the death penalty and the repeated 
errors discovered in US
     capital cases.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 05 MARCH 2015 TO:

Clemency Section, Board of Pardons and Paroles
8610 Shoal Creek Blvd., Austin, Texas 78757-6814, USA
Fax: 512 467 0945
Email: bpp-pio at tdcj.state.tx.us
Salutation: Dear Board members



Governor Greg Abbott
Office of the Governor, P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428, USA
Phone: 512 463 2000
Fax: 512 463 1849
Salutation: Dear Governor

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