Rodney Reed Files New Writ of Habeas Corpus Including Four New Witness Statements

The Writ to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and 21st Judicial District Court Includes Four New Witness Statements

(November 12, 2019 – Bastrop, TX) Yesterday, lawyers for Rodney Reed, who remains on Texas’ death row, filed a Writ of Habeas Corpus with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the 21st Judicial District Court asking the court to vacate Reed’s conviction and death sentence because of even more new evidence that proves Reed did not murder Stacey Stites. Several more witnesses have come forward with powerful new credible information that exonerates Reed and inculpates Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, Jr., in her murder. 

Act now: Stop the execution of Rodney Reed

Four new witnesses have been located in the past few days with additional evidence that refutes the state’s portrayal of Fennell and Stites as a happy couple eagerly anticipating their upcoming wedding. This new evidence includes declarations from:

• Richard Derleth, a deputy in the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, who states that H.E.B. staff members who worked with Stites would warn her when Fennell came to the store so she could hide from him to avoid having him start fights with her;
• Brent Sappington, who stated that while visiting his father, William Sappington, who lived in the apartment directly below Fennell and Stites, he overheard screaming and banging, and his father confirmed that it was the couple upstairs fighting;
• Vicki Sappington, William Sappington’s daughter-in-law and Brent Sappington’s wife, who stated that William Sappington frequently expressed concern that Fennell was verbally abusive toward Stites, that he feared Fennell was also physically abusive and that he had reported his concerns to local law enforcement, but officers dismissed his concerns; and
• Rebecca Peoples, another co-worker of Stites, who recalled Stites telling her that she was afraid of her fiancé and that she was having an affair with a black man.

Related: Bipartisan letter against Reed’s execution

“We continue to follow every investigative lead in this case, and this painstaking work continues to bear fruit. These are not people coming out of the woodwork. They are police officers, verified co-workers of the victim, and her neighbors. These people have nothing to gain by telling us what they know; and what we have learned corroborates Mr. Reed’s relationship with Ms. Stites and further implicates Jimmy Fennell in the murder. While Bastrop County law enforcement clearly suspected Fennell in 1996, it is increasingly apparent that their shoddy investigation and rush to judgment against Mr. Reed resulted in the wrong man landing on death row,” said Bryce Benjet, Reed’s lawyer and senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project. 

Throughout the post-conviction investigation, the state’s case has been deconstructed and invalidated by Reed’s defense team. In June 2018, they filed an Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus before a Texas court that included candid admissions of error and affidavits from the same expert witnesses who were called by the state at Reed’s 1998 Bastrop County murder trial. This now-recanted expert testimony provided a crucial link between Reed’s DNA and the murder and was used to refute Reed’s long-maintained insistence that he is innocent of the crime, but was involved in a consensual sexual relationship with Stites. 

Additionally, renowned forensic pathologist Michael Baden, M.D. also testified at a hearing in 2017 that the condition of Stites’s body rendered the state’s theory of Reed’s guilt impossible.  Where the state argued Stites was killed between 3-5 a.m. on April 23, 1996, the evidence showed that Stites was actually killed before midnight on April 22nd. Baden’s testimony was corroborated by two other leading experts and uncontradicted by the state.

Related: 10 Facts You Need to Know About Rodney Reed

In the 20 years since Reed’s trial, there is substantial evidence that both exonerates Reed and implicates Fennell. New witnesses have come forward, including Stites’ cousin, who was aware that Reed and Stites were romantically involved. Fennell’s best friend at the time, Bastrop Sheriff’s Officer Curtis Davis, has revealed that Fennell gave an inconsistent account of where he was on the night of the murder. Fennell, who was recently released after serving a 10-year prison term for a sex crime, had told his friend he had been out drinking on the night Stites was murdered. He later claimed he was with Stites in their apartment during the time that we now know was the actual time of her death, based on Dr. Baden’s updated testimony. When asked to explain this discrepancy, Fennell declined to testify because his answers might further incriminate him.

Reed is represented by Innocent Project Senior Staff Attorney Bryce Benjet and Andrew MacRae of Levatino Pace PLLC. The Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck at Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.