Death row inmate Rodney Reed, who was convicted of capital murder in the grisly 1996 rape and slaying of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, received a Jan. 14, 2015 date of execution on Monday morning from visiting Judge Doug Shaver.
Following a 30-minute delay, Reed was escorted into the court room around 11:30 a.m. wearing red and white striped prison garb as friends and family members sporting solid-white t-shirts emblazoned with “Free Rodney Reed” in bold, black letters watched from across the aisle.
Defense attorneys and prosecutors agreed prior to the hearing that several pieces of evidence from the crime scene would be sent to the Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory Service in Garland for additional DNA testing, according to an order signed by Bastrop County District Attorney Bryan Goertz and defense attorney Bryce Benjet.
Because of the January date, the crime lab will have an ample amount of time to analyze the evidence, Shaver said.
Items to be sent in for further testing include swabs taken from Stites’ body, cuttings taken from the victim’s underwear, and strands of hair retrieved the victim’s left sock, the back of the victim’s left leg, the victim’s back and the victim’s pubic area, according to the agreement.
Benjet said the defense wanted additional items tested, including the belt used to strangle Stites, additional clothing belonging to the victim, and condoms found near her body, among others, but the state refused.
“This is a case with very real questions,” said Benjet. “Given the troubled history and troubled past [of the case] additional DNA evidence can ultimately undermine the rest of the evidence.”
Benjet argued in front of the packed courtroom that several witnesses have come forward supporting claims that Reed and Stites had been romantically involved months before her death, explaining the presence of his semen in her body.
“The trial theory for the state was based on a DNA match to Mr. Reed,” he said at the hearing. “The match was the Cinderella slipper.”
Benjet also points to Stites’ fiancé Jimmy Fennell as the person most likely responsible for her murder. The former Georgetown police officer is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody.
Fennell, who was with Stites’ mother when she was told Stacy was missing, was the primary suspect for several months, but was ultimately cleared, according to the opinion of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in January.
The defense also raised concern about a pair of Busch Beer cans that were found along the road near Stites’ body that potentially linked a Giddings police officer to the crime scene.
According to an analysis of the DNA results conducted in 2000 by Arthur Eisenberg, then director of the DNA laboratory at the North Texas School of Public Health, it was concluded that Giddings police officer David Hall could not be excluded from leaving saliva on the can.
Eisenberg said one should “not make too much” of that, adding that approximately four in 10,000 Caucasian individuals also couldn’t be excluded from leaving the saliva, according to a 2001 state response to a previous motion for appeal.
When initially tried in 1998, Reed’s defense attorneys provided no eyewitness accounts suggesting Reed and Stites had been romantically involved. Reed had also initially denied having known Stites in any capacity when first questioned by police more than a year after her death.
Prosecutors also point to five indictments for rape and attempted rape, several of which were supported by conclusive DNA evidence, brought against Reed both during and after his trial, as well as a sexual assault case Reed had been acquitted of in 1991.
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