Rodney Reed

If the state of Texas has their way, Rodney Reed will be executed for the death of Stacey Stites on November 20, 2019. Only thing is.. he probably didn’t do it.

Hang Em High Texas

If you don’t know anything about Texas, you need to know this. In 2018, the State of Texas put 13 people to death. That’s more than half of the 25 executions held in the United States last year. Texas is responsible for 7 of the 17 executions nationwide to date in 2019. Over the last five years, more than 70% of death sentences have been imposed on people of color in Texas. While African-Americans comprise less than 13% of the population, they comprise 44.2% of death row inmates in Texas. Thirteen people in Texas have been released from death row due to evidence of their wrongful conviction and there is substantial evidence that Texas has “probably” executed the most innocent people, including Gary Graham. If you are African American and plan on going to Texas, I would recommend you wear some black pointed cowboy boots with tassels, buy a broad-spectrum sunscreen of at least SPF 155 and learn French. If the police stop you, tell them the only English words you know are Dolly Parton. Here is the suggested phrase, “J’aime Dolly Parton!! Est-ce le chemin de l’opéra?” ( I love Dolly Parton. Is this the way to the opera house?)

Nothing Has Changed

The killing of minorities by the state is nothing new. Ethnicity plays a critical role in who receives the death penalty now and ethnicity played a critical role in who received the death penalty then. Most of us are familiar with the George Stinney case, a 14 year old African American executed by the state for killing of two white girls, ages 7 and 11, in his hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. He was executed in 1944. After a re-examination by the Northeastern University School of Law which sought a judicial review, his conviction was overturned in 2014. Seventy years after he was executed a court ruled that he had not received a fair trial. The youngest person ever to be sentenced to death in the United States was James Arcene, a Native American, for his role in a robbery and murder committed when he was ten years old. He was hanged for stealing 25 cents. It amounted to five dollars in today’s money. Convicted and actually executed are two different things. James was convicted and sentenced to death at age 10. He wasn’t actually hung until 1885, when he was 23. George was put on the electric chair when he was 14 and executed. So James was the youngest person ever convicted and George was the youngest person ever executed.

Rodney Reeds Conviction

Reed was convicted of killing Stites in April of 1996. The sole basis for his conviction lay in the fact that DNA evidence was recovered from Stites body, although it was proven that the two were romantically involved. Based on that fact the prosecution argued that Reed had assaulted, raped, and strangled Stites. Reports from the Austin Chronicle said the prosecutor hammered the fact to the jurors that ” DNA was the “Cinderella’s slipper,” of the crime. Almost every cell in our bodies contains DNA, the genetic material that programs how cells work. Any two people share, on average, 99.9% of their DNA, meaning that only 0.1% of your DNA is unique to you. The only exception is identical twins, who share 100%. DNA evidence is used in less than 0.1 percent of all criminal cases. With that being said, it is easier to exclude a suspect based on DNA profiling since most of us share the same 99% DNA material.

Now there is no need for us to bead around the cactus. Reed was a black man involved in a consensual sexual relationship with a white woman who was the fiance to a white police officer in the little town of Gidding Texas. After the 2001 World Trade Center bombing, Condoleezza Rice, George W, Bush’s National Security Advisor was asked, “Did the you have prior knowledge about the terrorist threat?” Rice told then “Yes, she had read a report before the bombing, entitled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S..“” It doesn’t take a genius to determine that Jimmy Fennell Jr., a police officer and Stites fiance was determined to strike in Gidding Texas. According to the Austin Chronicle, in Reed’s court appointed attorney opening statement she said, “We can readily explain the DNA found in Stites’ body which was initially unknown to Jimmy Fennell. Reed was having a sexual affair with Stites. The relationship would be not only scandalous, but dangerous in a small Texas town. There was interracial dating in this case and you will hear from people who will talk to you about the fact that there was a secret affair. The only evidence that Stites awakened on the morning of April 23, 1996, and left for work… or that she was even alive to do so, was the testimony of one man, Jimmy Fennell.” Close quote….

After nearly a year of investigating, the authorities finally set their sights on Reed. Reed had a record from a previous conviction and it was at that time they collected his DNA. So as we said earlier, Reeds defense team put all their eggs into the same basket. They hope to persuade 12 white jurors that Fennell had somehow found out about the relationship and in a fit of rage rape and killed Stites. Well as you probably figured out, that didn’t work because I’m writing a story about it. In addition the team defending Reed must have got their diploma from Trump University. They failed to put on the stand an alibi witness who said that Reed was not at the scene of the crime at the time it was perpetrated, failed to establish the consensual relationship between Stites and Reed, failed to pursue DNA evidence left at the scene of the crime which implicated another police officer who happened to be a neighbor and good friend on Fennell, failed to request a search warrant for the murder vehicle or Fennells apartment and failed to produce their own expert witness when the prosecutor presented the DNA evidence. Now when Stites body was found, it wasn’t Reed who was the primary suspect, but Texas Ranger L.R. “Rocky” Wardlow, the lead investigator had focused on Fennell. He met with Fennell on Oct. 3, to administer a polygraph exam, which reportedly indicated he was deceptive on relevant questions… or as we say in the hood, he was lying out the side of his mouth. The question that Fennell failed.. “Did you strangle Stites?” Wardlow dragged Fennell back to lie detecting machine a final time and again he failed on the same question. He claimed he was distraught over Stites murder and then promptly asked for an attorney. He was never interviewed again.

Despite all this evidence which which pointed to a reasonable doubt, District Judge Harold Townslee ruled the new evidence would not have been enough to create reasonable doubt for the jurors. In February of this year, Reed’s subsequent state habeas appeal was also denied because the justices ruled that his court-appointed attorney, Bill Barbisch, had failed to file the appeal by the legal deadline. Finally in December 2000, Klan members held an informational brunch at the Red Gun Bar, for anybody who thinks they bull shi**ing. Okay..they didn’t hold a brunch… but you can’t tell it wasn’t a party somewhere. Anyway, after this travesty, Fennell, went to prison for raping a woman in his custody in 2007. He served a 10-year sentence and was released in March 2018. Reed has been on death row for 20 years. During his time in jail, Arthur Snow, a former member of the Aryan Brotherhood and prison mate of Jimmy, disclosed a conversation in which Jimmy allegedly confessed to murdering Stacey Stites stating, “I had to kill my n*****-loving fiancée.” Klan.. what Klan…? As Rodney Reeds execution date approaches, he is getting support from people like Rihanna, T.I., Busta Rhymes and Meek Mills. Also other prominent hip-hop and R&B acts have taken to Twitter to urge the state of Texas not to kill that black man, especially with the wealth of new evidence they now have. They have Fennell, a liar and convicted sex fiend, they have Arthur Snow, former Klan member and rat, they don’t have any DNA evidence on the weapon used to strangle Stites, they have a witness who can put Reed at another place while the crime was being committed, ( Reed’s attorney’s didn’t call the witness.) and you have the prosecutor’s office withholding evidence. The only thing you don’t have is justice for an innocent black man.

References:

• TCADP (Texas Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty)
• Learn Genetics
• Billboard
• The Innocence Project
• The Austin Chronicle (Recommended reading)