For 23 Years, Prosecutors Illegally Hid Evidence That Could Have Exonerated Rodney Reed

Less than a month before Mr. Reed’s July, 2021 evidentiary hearing on a separate petition still pending before the CCA, the State “discovered” exculpatory evidence revealing that before trial at least three of Ms. Stites’s co-workers gave statements to law enforcement and the prosecution that Mr. Reed and Ms. Stites knew each other and were, in Ms. Stites’s own words, “good friends.” (App. at pp. 1-2.) The Application states: “[H]ad the Court [of Criminal Appeals] not remanded Mr. Reed’s prior Brady, false testimony and actual innocence claims for a determination on the merits, this information would have remained hidden forever.” (App. at p. 3.)

On June 25, 2021, the State disclosed for the first time to Mr. Reed’s lawyers that Suzan Hugen, a friend and co-worker of Ms. Stites, gave a statement to police that she saw Mr. Reed and Ms. Stites at the H.E.B. where the women worked and she introduced Mr. Reed to Ms. Hugen as a “good or close friend.” Ms. Hugen told police that Ms. Stites and Mr. Reed appeared “friendly, giggling, and flirting.” Ms. Hugen also told police that she believed that Mr. Fennell was physically abusive toward Ms. Stites. (App. at pp. 17-19.)

Two other H.E.B. co-workers of Ms. Stites also told police that Mr. Reed and Ms. Stites knew each other. These pre-trial interviews were not disclosed to Mr. Reed’s attorneys for 23 years,  until the eve of the July, 2021 evidentiary hearing. (App. at pp. 19-21.)

In addition, after Ms. Stites’s murder, her downstairs neighbor, William Sappington, reported violent domestic arguments between Ms. Stites and Mr. Fennell to a police officer and a District Attorney in neighboring Lee County, Ted Weems. Although then-District Attorney Weems had an affirmative duty under Brady v. Maryland to turn this information over to Mr. Reed’s attorneys, he — like other police and prosecutors — did not do so. (App. at pp. 22-23.)

The Application further states that the State sponsored false forensic testimony at Mr. Reed’s trial, which it used to argue that Mr. Reed’s defense, that he and Ms. Stites had consensual sex a few days prior to her death, was scientifically impossible. The State’s own experts conceded at the July, 2021 evidentiary hearing that the central points of the State’s forensic case were false. (App. at pp. 33, 54-55.)

An all-white jury convicted Mr. Reed, a Black man, of the murder of Ms. Stites, a white woman. Mr. Fennell, Ms. Stites’s fiancé, was the prime suspect, but police turned their attention to Mr. Reed when DNA recovered from Ms. Stites matched Mr. Reed, with whom Ms. Stites was having a relationship. Mr. Reed was scheduled for execution on November 20, 2019, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed his execution to allow the courts to consider new evidence of his innocence. At a two week evidentiary hearing in July, 2021, Mr. Reed demonstrated that he did not kidnap, sexually assault, or murder Ms. Stites and that no reasonable jury would now convict him.  While a decision on that hearing is still pending before the CCA, this new writ shows that Mr. Reed’s conviction violates the most central tenets of our Constitution and cannot stand.