A year ago yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued an indefinite stay of execution for our client Rodney Reed.
Rodney was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas, but he’s always maintained his innocence. Just last year, the court ordered a new hearing in response to mounting evidence of Rodney’s actual innocence including evidence of Brady violations and false testimony presented by the state.
This gave Rodney and his family hope that he would soon return home, but since then, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Texas’ prisons hard and delayed his new hearing until 2021.
Rodney Reed with his brother Rodrick, nephew Rodrick Jr., and mother Sandra Reed at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, West Livingston, Texas in 2019. Photo courtesy of the Reed Justice Initiative.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, at least 231 incarcerated people have died from the virus in Texas alone. The rate of infection for incarcerated people and prison staff in Texas is 490% higher than it is for the state’s general population. So Rodney has been unable to receive visits from his lawyers or family members for months now. And he hasn’t been able to connect with his family by phone because access to calls has been more limited than usual. Though he remains on death row, Rodney is hopeful about his case.
He asks that his supporters “keep getting the word out about my case — talk to your friends, put things up on social media,” while he and his legal team await justice.
The Innocence Project exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice. www.innocenceproject.org
