Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed has been seeking to overturn his sentence since he first received it in 1996. Today (April 19), the Supreme Court sided with Reed in a lawsuit related to his case, clearing the way for him to continue fighting for his freedom.
The justices ruled in a 6-3 decision that Reed should have a chance to argue for DNA testing of crime scene evidence that he says will help exonerate him. With this move, SCOTUS sent Reed’s case back to a lower court to reconsider his constitutional challenge to the state’s law on DNA evidence.
The high court took up the question of whether Reed waited too long to file his lawsuit claiming that untested crime scene evidence would clear his name. Texas courts and the federal appeals court in New Orleans found that he missed the deadline.
The Supreme Court reversed the appellate ruling with their majority opinion penned by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas dissented. Thomas, who is currently under fire for accepting luxury trips from a Nazi memorabilia collector, wrote that the outcome “is no barrier to the prompt execution of Reed’s lawful sentence,” per the AP.
Reed was sentenced to death for the 1996 murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Prosecutors declared that Reed raped and strangled Stites as she went to work at a supermarket in the rural town of Bastrop near Austin. He has long stood by his claim that Stites’ fiancé, a former police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the real murderer. According to the death row inmate, Fennell was angry because Stites was having an affair with a Black man. The ex-fiancé, meanwhile, has served time behind bars for sexual assault and has denied killing her. He was eventually released from prison in 2018.
The case has caught the attention of prominent people both inside and outside the world of politics. Before his scheduled execution in November 2019, celebrities and lawmakers shared their support for Reed and demanded he be allowed to prove his innocence. Beyoncé, Rihanna, Meek Mill, T.I., Oprah Winfrey, and Kim Kardashian were just a few of the big names who successfully advocated for him four years ago.