AUSTIN (KXAN) – The U.S. Supreme Court denied on Tuesday a petition by death-row defendant Rodney Reed seeking a review of his case. Reed argued his constitutional rights were violated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals’ wrongfully high bar for his innocence claim, and, separately, a trial court’s “rubberstamping” of state findings that discounted numerous new and favorable witnesses for Reed who testified at a nine-day hearing in 2021.
Reed filed the petition for writ of certiorari in November 2023, hoping the high court would intervene in the case. He was convicted of murdering 19-year-old Stacey Stites in Bastrop in 1996.
“Rodney Reed has been fighting to prove his innocence for a quarter of a century. He has litigation pending in several courts and his legal team is continuing to pursue all available avenues to secure his relief," said Parker Rider-Longmaid, an attorney for Reed with the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. "Mr. Reed’s legal fight to test key DNA evidence and prove his innocence is far from over.”
Reed asked the Supreme Court to decide if the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals violated his due process rights by requiring “affirmative evidence” showing “more likely than not his theory of innocence is true.”
Reed argued that level of proof is higher than what’s required in every other state except Missouri. Reed’s evidence, he said, met the correct threshold already: that his “new reliable evidence” would have made it “more likely than not that a reasonable juror would have reasonable doubt,” according to the petition.
Reed’s lawyers also asked the high court to review whether his due process rights were violated when a trial court, following an evidentiary hearing in 2021, decided to adopt “verbatim the state’s error-riddled findings of fact rather than conducting its own independent analysis of the evidence,” according to the petition.
Last June, the Court of Criminal Appeals deferred to those trial court's findings and rejected Reed's applications claiming his innocence.
In response to Reed's petition filed in U.S. Supreme Court, the state argued his due process rights weren’t violated because the constitution doesn’t require the state to adopt certain procedures for his type of innocence claim, according to a state response.
Reed’s “failure to demonstrate a constitutional violation creates another reason to deny” the petition, said state attorneys.
Reed has worked for decades – through all manner of petitions and appeals at every level of the criminal justice system – to get his case retried and prevent his execution.
Throughout the case, Reed has maintained his innocence. His attorneys with The Innocence Project have steadily presented new witnesses and experts who, they say, chip away at the state’s original case against Reed.
Reed has already seen two execution dates be set for him and paused. It is not clear when the state may set another one. He continues to pursue DNA testing of crime scene evidence.
