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The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to hear an appeal from Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, leaving intact a previous state court ruling on a 1996 Bastrop County murder case.
The lower ruling denied Reed’s request for additional DNA testing in the killing of Stacey Stites 30 years ago.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the appeal decision. They said the case should have been sent back for further review after learning the belt used to kill Stites was not tested.
“It is inexplicable why the Bastrop County District Attorney’s office refused to allow DNA testing of the belt that was used to kill Stites, despite the very substantial possibility that such testing could exculpate Reed and identify the real killer,” Sotomayor wrote.
Reed was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death for the murder of 19-year-old Stites, who was strangled with a belt while on her way to work in Bastrop.
Prosecutors have continued to support the conviction and oppose testing of the belt. State courts deny revisiting the murder weapon, arguing it was contaminated after trial and does not pass Texas’ post-conviction DNA testing law.
Sotomayor pushed back on the outcome March 23, saying the court’s decision will lead to unanswered questions.
“The state will likely execute Reed without the world ever knowing whether Reed’s or Fennell’s DNA is on the murder weapon, even though a simple DNA test could reveal that information,” she wrote. “I respectfully dissent.”
Throughout the years, Reed has denied the crime and maintains he and Stites were in a consensual relationship.
He has also alleged Stites’ fiance at the time, former Bastrop County police officer Jimmy Fennell, was responsible for the killing.
Fennell has denied such claims
