Supreme Court lets Rodney Reed pursue DNA lawsuit in Stacey Stites murder case

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday reversed a judgment by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of death row inmate Rodney Reed by ruling that his request for further DNA testing in his case can be considered.

Reed's attorneys say that evidence could exonerate him.

The Supreme Court's opinion, issued by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said Reed's request for DNA testing could be considered because the statute of limitations had not run out for the request. The high court ruled 6-3 in Reed's favor.

The judgment reversed a ruling by the 5th Circuit that said Reed waited too long to file his claim that prosecutors violated his civil rights by refusing to test the murder weapon and other evidence.

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The Supreme Court ruling Wednesday was based on a federal lawsuit that Reed filed in 2019 arguing that blocking access to the DNA tests violated his civil rights.

Reed was convicted of capital murder in 1998 in the strangulation death of Stacey Stites and received the death penalty. Stites' body was found by the side of a rural road in Bastrop County on April 23, 1996, with Reed's sperm inside her.

Before she died, Stites had planned to marry her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, then a Giddings police officer. Defense lawyers have argued that Reed was having an affair with Stites.

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Reed's lawyers have said he is innocent and want to get DNA tests done on crime scene evidence that was probably touched by the killer, including Stites’ clothing and two pieces of the belt used to strangle her. Prosecutors have argued that the items have been contaminated by repeated handling during and after Reed's trial.

Texas has a two-year statute of limitations for pursing federal civil rights claims. The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to determine when the deadline clock started ticking. The high court ruled it began after all appeals were finally decided in state courts in 2017. The 5th Circuit had ruled that the deadline started when the trial court ruled in favor of the state in 2014.

"In Reed’s case, the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete when the state litigation ended and deprived Reed of his asserted liberty interest in DNA testing," the Supreme Court opinion said. "Therefore, Reed’s ... claim was complete and the statute of limitations began to run when the state litigation ended — when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Reed’s motion for rehearing."

Kavanaugh was joined in his ruling by Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.

Reed's case will now be sent back to the 5th Circuit for further proceedings "on the merits of his years-long fight to gain access to DNA testing," said Jane Pucher, one of Reed's attorneys. "The ruling clears a path for the 5th Circuit to consider Mr. Reed's request that DNA testing be conducted on the murder weapon and other probative items from the crime scene.”

Another attorney for Reed, Parker Rider-Longmaid, said, "Mr. Reed seeks DNA testing of key crime scene evidence that has never been tested, including the belt handled by the perpetrator while strangling the victim.

“We are grateful that the court has kept the courthouse doors open to Mr. Reed, a Black man who has spent 24 years on death row for the murder of a white woman with whom he was having an affair, a crime he has steadfastly maintained he did not commit," Rider-Longmaid said.

"As Mr. Reed’s briefs explain, extensive evidence developed in postconviction proceedings both points to Mr. Reed’s innocence and implicates the victim’s fiancé.”

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Bastrop County District Attorney Bryan Goertz has refused to allow DNA testing of the crime scene evidence, Rider-Longmaid said.

"He should join us in the search for the truth, rather than blocking it. If DNA evidence exists, as it does here, it should be tested. It’s that simple," Rider-Longmaid said.

Goertz declined to comment Wednesday.

Five days before Reed was to be executed in 2019, a different appeal in which defense attorneys argued that new evidence exonerated Reed prompted the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to order a hearing in state District Court in Bastrop.

More: Judge recommends Rodney Reed conviction should stand; appeals court to make later decision

During the hearing on July 21, 2021, defense attorneys presented new witnesses who testified that they had seen Stites with Reed or had heard her talk about having an affair with a Black man. The defense witnesses also testified that they had seen Stites and Fennell fighting or had heard Fennell saying derogatory things about Stites after she was killed.

Bastrop County investigators testified that they could not find a way that Fennell could have killed Stites, then abandoned his truck and traveled 30 miles back to his apartment to answer a phone call. A female witness also testified that Reed had sexually assaulted her in 1995.

Fennell testified during the hearing that he didn't kill Stites and did not know Reed. Fennell was sentenced in 2008 to 10 years in prison for kidnapping and inappropriate conduct with a person in custody while a police officer in Georgetown.

State District Judge J.D. Langley, who presided over the hearing, recommended in November 2021 that Reed's conviction should stand.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Supreme Court allows Texas inmate Rodney Reed to pursue DNA lawsuit