News / FJP Releases
FJP Urges Texas Court to Review New Evidence of Innocence in Rodney Reed Death Penalty Case
July 31, 2026 (Austin, TX) — Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), and 29 current and former prosecutors and law enforcement officials filed an amicus brief urging the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to fully examine substantial evidence pointing to Rodney Reed’s innocence and allow critical, long-denied DNA testing in his case.
Mr. Reed, a Black man, has been on Texas’ death row since 1998 for the rape and murder of Stacey Stites, a crime he has consistently maintained he did not commit. He was convicted based largely on scientific evidence that prosecutors described at trial as the “smoking gun.” However, since Mr. Reed’s trial, advances in forensic science have undermined key evidence presented to the jury. Additional witness testimony and new evidence pointing to alternative suspects have also raised serious questions about the prosecution’s original theory of the case.
A prosecutor’s job does not end with a conviction. It includes an ongoing responsibility to seek justice, disclose exculpatory evidence, and ensure that credible claims of innocence receive meaningful review. That responsibility is especially important in death penalty cases, where a mistake cannot be undone. The well-documented role of racial bias in wrongful convictions further underscores why DNA testing and full judicial review are essential in this case.
“The strength of our justice system is not measured by how many convictions it preserves. It is measured by whether we are willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads,” said FJP Executive Director Aramis Donell. “When credible new evidence raises serious questions about a conviction, especially in a death penalty case, our responsibility is not to defend the past. It is to pursue the truth. Every credible claim of innocence deserves to be fully and transparently examined before an irreversible punishment is carried out.”
Read the full amicus brief here.
BACKGROUND
Since Mr. Reed’s trial, approximately a dozen witnesses, including friends, coworkers, and relatives of Ms. Stites, have come forward confirming that Mr. Reed and Ms. Stites were engaged in a consensual relationship, leading to the presence of his DNA on Ms. Stites’s body. The habeas application further alleges that investigators possessed evidence supporting that relationship before trial, but prosecutors failed to disclose it to the defense, and the jury never heard it.
Developments in forensic science have also discredited key aspects of the state’s original theory. Experts, including the state’s own experts, now recognize that sperm can remain intact for days, contradicting testimony presented at trial that suggested the DNA evidence necessarily meant sexual contact occurred near the time of Ms. Stites’s death. Additional forensic evidence cited in the application indicates that Ms. Stites likely died earlier than prosecutors argued at trial.
The habeas application further presents evidence implicating Ms. Stites’s fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, who was a police officer at the time of her death. In the years since Ms. Stites’s murder, Mr. Fennell was convicted and imprisoned for kidnapping and raping a woman while on duty. New evidence against Mr. Fennell includes witness testimony regarding his prior domestic abuse of and threats against Ms. Stites, accounts that he knew of Ms. Stites’s relationship with Mr. Reed prior to her death, and declarations from two witnesses stating that Fennell has confessed to Ms. Stites’s murder while in prison.
Mr. Reed’s twelfth habeas application includes six new sworn declarations from Ms. Stites’s former coworkers confirming the relationship between Mr. Reed and Ms. Stites, testimony placing a Giddings Police Department vehicle on the road between Fennell’s apartment and the location where Ms. Stites’s body was discovered, and additional accounts of Fennell’s abusive conduct and threats. The application asserts claims of actual innocence, Brady violations arising from the suppression of evidence favorable to the defense, and requests reconsideration of prior rulings in light of the cumulative evidence now before the court.