John —
In 1998, Rodney Reed, a Black man, was convicted of the 1996 murder of a white woman named Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas. Rodney has maintained his innocence for more than 20 years. He and Stacey were having a consensual relationship, but the prosecution told the jury that they had searched everywhere and no one ever said Rodney and Stacey knew each other.
However, it was recently discovered that the prosecutors at Rodney’s 1998 trial illegally concealed statements made by Stacey’s co-workers that showed Rodney and Stacey knew each other and were romantically involved. Because of this, his attorneys filed a Request for Grant of Application for Writ of Habeas Corpus this morning to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
“The prosecution’s concealment of statements from Stacey Stites’s co-workers and neighbors is a textbook example of a Brady violation. The constitutional violation is as crystal clear as the remedy: Rodney Reed’s conviction and death sentence must be overturned,” said Jane Pucher, senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project, and one of Rodney’s attorneys.
In their application, Rodney’s attorneys also detail how the State illegally suppressed statements from Stacey’s neighbors about loud, violent arguments between Stacey and her fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, a police officer who was the prime suspect in her murder for nearly a year.
Under the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady vs. Maryland, prosecutors had a legal duty to turn over all of this evidence that was favorable to Rodney’s defense. Instead, they deliberately hid evidence that could have helped prove his innocence for more than two decades.
Take a moment to read the details about Rodney’s case [[link removed], and then share this news with your friends and family on Facebook [[link removed], Twitter [[link removed], and Instagram [[link removed]
What’s been done to Rodney is a grave miscarriage of justice, and we won’t stop until he is free.
With gratitude,
— The Innocence Project Team
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Started in 1992 as a legal clinic at Cardozo School of Law, the Innocence Project is now an independent nonprofit, affiliated with Cardozo, that exonerates the wrongly convicted through DNA testing and reforms the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
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