{"id":216743,"date":"2026-03-23T16:21:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/216743\/"},"modified":"2026-03-23T16:21:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T16:21:11","slug":"the-supreme-court-might-be-helping-texas-execute-an-innocent-man-in-rodney-reed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/216743\/","title":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court might be helping Texas execute an innocent man in Rodney Reed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court<\/a>\u2019s refusal to hear Rodney Reed<\/a>\u2019s appeal means Texas will likely execute him without knowing whether his or another person\u2019s DNA was on the murder weapon, Justice Sonia Sotomayor<\/a> wrote for the court\u2019s three Democratic appointees on Monday. She made that stark observation in a dissent<\/a> from the court\u2019s refusal to review Reed\u2019s petition in his long-running effort to prove his innocence.<\/p>\n

It takes four justices to agree to review an appeal, so the court fell one vote short of possibly remedying what Sotomayor deemed an \u201cinexplicable\u201d situation in this capital case. Even if the dissenters had attracted a fourth vote for review, a majority of the nine justices would have needed to ultimately rule in Reed\u2019s favor to grant him relief.<\/p>\n

In her dissent, the Obama appointee\u2019s \u201cinexplicable\u201d remark applied to the Bastrop County District Attorney\u2019s Office\u2019s refusal to allow DNA testing of the belt used to kill Stacey Lee Stites, \u201cdespite the very substantial possibility that such testing could exculpate Reed and identify the real killer.\u201d She also said it applied to the lower courts\u2019 failure to evaluate Reed\u2019s claims more carefully, especially when that lack of care may lead to the execution of an innocent man.<\/p>\n

She said the federal appeals court that covers Texas failed to address a potentially winning argument that Reed raised in support of his effort to prove his innocence. Nonetheless, the high court refused to step in.<\/p>\n

Reed was convicted in 1998 of killing Stites. He has suggested that her fianc\u00e9, Bastrop County police officer Jimmy Fennell, was the one who killed her because Stites and Reed were having an affair.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court\u2019s denial of Reed\u2019s petition means the state will likely executive him \u201cwithout the world ever knowing whether Reed\u2019s or Fennell\u2019s DNA is on the murder weapon, even though a simple DNA test could reveal that information,\u201d Sotomayor wrote.<\/p>\n

Joining her dissent were Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.<\/p>\n

The dissent appeared on Monday\u2019s order list<\/a>, a document that contains the court\u2019s latest action on pending appeals. It consists mostly of denials that emphasize the Republican-appointed majority\u2019s power in shaping the court\u2019s docket.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s list also showed Sotomayor leading the Democratic-appointed trio in a dissent in a qualified immunity case<\/a>, in which she called out the majority for giving officers \u201clicense to inflict gratuitous pain on a nonviolent protestor even where there is no threat to officer safety or any other reason to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

In yet another case on the list, Sotomayor dissented \u2014 this time all by herself \u2014 from the court\u2019s refusal to hear a separate qualified immunity appeal. In that one<\/a>, she said the court made a \u201cgrave error\u201d with its refusal to consider a case involving the arrest of a reporter. By denying the petition, the court \u201cleaves standing a clear attack on the First Amendment\u2019s role in protecting our democracy,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter<\/a> for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration\u2019s legal cases.<\/p>\n

The post The Supreme Court might be helping Texas execute an innocent man in Rodney Reed<\/a> appeared first on MS NOW<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on ms.now<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court\u2019s refusal to hear Rodney Reed\u2019s appeal means Texas will likely execute him without knowing whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4696,84566,24746,84563,84564,84565,5759,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-216743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-bastrop-county","tag-dissent","tag-federal-appeals-court","tag-rodney-reed","tag-sonia-sotomayor","tag-stacey-lee-stites","tag-supreme-court","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}