For the
October Reasonably Suspicious podcast, my co-host Mandy Marzullo and I interviewed attorneys for death-row inmate Rodney Reed, who is scheduled to be executed on November 20th. Despite this apparent failure, Bryce Benjet of the national Innocence Project and Quinncy McNeal of Mayer-Brown in Houston are in fact excellent lawyers, and their habeas-corpus-phase deconstruction has left little evidence remaining from the prosecution's case that convicted their client.
Regardless, Reed's execution looms.
We published the first part of the interview on the
main, monthly podcast in October. Now, here's the full interview, including the final portion describing how all of the forensic evidence in Reed's case has evaporated.
If you already listened to the first part on the podcast, part two of the interview starts at the 11:40 mark.
Bottom line, the state's case hinged on two prongs: 1) forensic testimony that Reed must have had sex with victim Stacey Stites soon before her death, and 2) the fact that only friends of Reed, not Stites' acquaintances, corroborated his version that the two were engaged in an illicit affair.
Now, a re-investigation of the case by Quinncy McNeal has uncovered several additional witnesses who corroborate the relationship between Reed and Stites, none of whom had any relationship with Reed whatsoever. Indeed, after this interview was conducted, a witness came forward who says Stites' fiancee, Jimmy Fennell,
confessed to killing her while in prison.
Meanwhile - and this is the portion of the interview that wasn't included in the October podcast -
all of the prosecution forensics in the case have been discredited. The defense has secured retraction letters from the former Travis County medical examiner and the DPS crime lab saying the testimony provided against Reed at trial was wrong. If jurors had heard the corrected forensic testimony, much less the independent corroboration of his and Stites' relationship, Rodney Reed almost certainly would never have been convicted in the first place.
With evidence of Reed's likely innocence mounting, the decision whether he will live or die is up to Gov. Greg Abbott and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. They have less than two weeks to decide. Twenty-six Texas House members - 13 Rs and 13 Ds - have
asked the Governor to commute Reed's sentence.
For more background, including the best exposition of recent evidence in the case, see Reed's "
clemency petition." See also the
Texas Tribune's latest coverage.
Find a transcript of our conversation below the jump:
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