Rodney Reed has spent more than two decades on death row in Texas, and his legal fight — sprawling, exhausting, and still very much alive — has wound its way through nearly every level of the American court system. The Supreme Court has weighed in more than once. It hasn’t gone cleanly either way.
Reed was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1996 rape and murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop County, Texas. He has maintained his innocence for nearly three decades. At the center of his legal campaign is a deceptively simple demand: test the DNA evidence, including the belt used to strangle Stites, and let the science speak. Texas, through a combination of procedural barriers and court rulings, has made that harder than it sounds.
A Patchwork of Rulings — Some Wins, Many Walls
The legal timeline here is genuinely hard to follow, and that’s not an accident of complexity — it’s the nature of capital post-conviction litigation in America. Reed has pursued relief through state courts, federal civil rights lawsuits, and multiple petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court. The results have been mixed in the most maddening way possible: just enough to keep fighting, never enough to walk free.
Back in 2014, Reed formally requested DNA testing under Texas law. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately affirmed the denial of that request, citing chain of custody problems with the evidence. Reed’s legal team then filed a federal civil rights lawsuit under §1983, challenging the constitutionality of the state’s DNA testing statute. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed that suit — not on the merits, but on a technicality: the statute of limitations. The appeals court ruled that the clock had started ticking when the trial court denied testing, not when the Court of Criminal Appeals issued its final decision.
That’s the kind of ruling that can feel, from the outside, almost cruelly procedural. A man’s access to potentially exonerating evidence, blocked not by the evidence itself, but by a disagreement over when a deadline started.
The Supreme Court Steps In — and Then Steps Back
In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered what looked like a genuine breakthrough. In a 6-3 decision in Reed v. Goertz, the justices reversed the Fifth Circuit, ruling that Reed had filed his DNA testing challenge on time. The Court remanded the case for further proceedings — meaning the belt, the most critical piece of physical evidence, could still be tested. The Innocence Project, which has long represented Reed, called it a significant moment. “We are grateful that the Court has kept the courthouse doors open to Mr. Reed,” the organization stated.
Still, the doors being open and walking through them are two very different things.
In a separate petition — this one seeking a new trial based on his actual innocence claims — the Supreme Court was far less receptive. Texas courts had rejected those claims in both 2021 and 2023, and in July 2024 the high court declined to take up Reed’s petition without so much as a written comment. No explanation. Just a denial. The Texas Tribune noted that Reed’s legal team remained undeterred: his lawyers emphasized that “Mr. Reed’s legal fight to test key DNA evidence and prove his innocence is far from over.”
That same petition denial drew a pointed response from Reed’s family. His brother, Roderick Reed, has been one of the most vocal advocates for his release, and the family has framed this fight in terms that go well beyond one man’s freedom. “We’re going to keep fighting, we’re going to keep going on to do what we set out to do, not just to get Rodney home but to get justice for Rodney, justice for Stacey Stites, to get this death penalty abolished,” he told reporters after the ruling.
A Stay, a Hearing, and the Question of Actual Innocence
How close did Reed come to execution? Very. In November 2019, with a death warrant signed and an execution date set, Texas courts stepped in at the last moment and issued a stay. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ordered an evidentiary hearing on Reed’s innocence claim — a rare and significant move. The Supreme Court had separately declined to intervene in 2020, but the state-level stay had already taken effect.
Observers at the time noted what that hearing represented. “It is no trivial moment that the Texas courts have concluded that Reed has presented a substantive claim of actual innocence warranting further consideration and development on the merits,” the Death Penalty Information Center observed. That evidentiary hearing eventually went against Reed — Texas courts ruled his innocence claims insufficient — but it underscored just how seriously some jurists have taken the possibility that the wrong man is on death row.
Reed has long argued that Jimmy Fennell, Stites’ fiancé at the time of her death and a former law enforcement officer who was later imprisoned for an unrelated sexual assault, was the actual killer. That theory has never been proven, and prosecutors have consistently maintained Reed’s guilt. But it’s a thread that has never fully unraveled, and Reed’s supporters argue it’s precisely why DNA testing matters so much.
Where Things Stand
Reed’s case is a strange and uncomfortable window into how capital post-conviction litigation actually works — not as a clean search for truth, but as a grinding procedural contest where the rules themselves can determine whether evidence ever sees the light of day. His DNA testing case, revived by the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling, is still working its way through the courts. His broader innocence claims have been rejected at every turn, at least so far. He has been on death row for more than 26 years. Texas has not scheduled a new execution date.
The broader fight over DNA access for death row inmates in Texas continues to evolve, with other cases raising similar questions about the state’s testing statute and who gets to use it — and when.
For now, Rodney Reed waits. And as his legal team has made clear more than once, waiting doesn’t mean finished. Whether the courts ultimately give him the test he’s been seeking for over a decade — and what that test might show — remains one of the most consequential unresolved questions in American capital punishment today.
