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dalton99a

(81,526 posts) Wed Nov 6, 2019, 11:21 AM Nov 2019

Texas is about to execute a man for murder. His lawyers say someone else confessed to the crime.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/11/06/texas-plans-execute-man-this-month-murder-his-lawyers-say-someone-else-confessed-crime/

Texas is about to execute a man for murder. His lawyers say someone else confessed to the crime.
By Brittany Shammas
November 6 at 6:04 AM

Stacey Stites was 19 years old and weeks from her wedding day when she failed to show for her early-morning shift at a grocery store in a small Texas town on April 23, 1996. Her partially clothed body was found the same day in the tangled brush alongside an unpaved road, her work name tag resting in the crook of her leg.

Twenty-three years later, the state of Texas is preparing to execute the man convicted of raping and strangling the soon-to-be-bride. Rodney Reed, 51, has been in prison since 1998 and was moved to death row over the summer. He is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Nov. 20.

But in an eleventh-hour bid to spare Reed’s life, his lawyers at the Innocence Project have filed court papers claiming someone else admitted responsibility for killing Stites: her police officer fiance, Jimmy Fennell, who was outraged she was having an affair with Reed, a black man. The confession was allegedly made to a prison inmate while Fennell was serving time for sexually assaulting a woman while on duty in 2007. It is, the Innocence Project attorneys say, merely the latest development pointing to Reed’s innocence and Fennell’s guilt.

After Stites’s body was discovered, investigators initially questioned Fennell, the then-24-year-old police officer she had been dating for about a year and was planning to marry. Reed’s attorneys have noted in court filings that her friends described Fennell as jealous in interviews with police, with one saying Stites had mentioned his violent temper.

Charles Wayne Fletcher, a former colleague of Fennell’s at the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office, told Reed’s attorneys that Fennell said he believed Stites was involved with “a n-----.”

Reed’s race was also cited by the former inmate who claimed Fennell confessed to him. Arthur Snow, a onetime member of the Aryan Brotherhood who was imprisoned with Fennell in Texas in 2010, said in a sworn affidavit that Fennell told him, “I had to kill my n----- loving fiancé.”

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Texas is about to execute a man for murder. His lawyers say someone else confessed to the crime. (Original Post) dalton99a Nov 2019 OP

Cousin believes Fennell not Reed killed Stites struggle4progress Nov 2019 #1

Lawmakers ask Abbott to stop execution struggle4progress Nov 2019 #2

New witness claims he's innocent struggle4progress Nov 2019 #3

Kick grantcart Nov 2019 #4

struggle4progress

(118,298 posts)

1. Cousin believes Fennell not Reed killed Stites

Reply to dalton99a (Original post)

Wed Nov 6, 2019, 11:34 AM

Nov 2019

November 6, 2019 at 8:07 AM EST - Updated November 6 at 8:07 AM

AUSTIN, Texas (FOX 7 Austin) - Heather Stobbs, the cousin of Stacey Stites, a Bastrop County woman murdered more than two decades ago, is speaking out ...

“Yes, I don’t have any doubt in my mind,” Stobbs replied when asked if she thought Fennell was guilty of the crime. “There is really nothing that could convince me that Jimmy Fennel didn’t do this.”

Fennell, a former cop, has been a free man since finishing out a 10-year prison sentence ... for sexually assaulting a woman in his custody ...

Stobbs is not Stites’ only relative to come forward. Multiple cousins and one now deceased uncle have joined her, writing letters calling for a new trial for Rodney Reed ...

https://www.wfxg.com/2019/11/06/cousin-says-she-believes-fennell-not-rodney-reed-killed-stacey-stites/

struggle4progress

(118,298 posts)

2. Lawmakers ask Abbott to stop execution

Reply to dalton99a (Original post)

Wed Nov 6, 2019, 11:36 AM

Nov 2019

BY JOLIE MCCULLOUGH NOV. 5, 201912 AM

... The murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites in Bastrop and the subsequent conviction of Rodney Reed has been in the spotlight for more than two decades. Reed, now 51, has consistently maintained his innocence in the 1996 slaying. His lawyers for years have pointed to new evidence they say makes it impossible for Reed to be the killer and instead, they say, puts suspicion on Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennell.

Both men have been accused of multiple sexual assaults. Reed was indicted, but never convicted, in several other rape cases months before his trial in Stites’ death began in 1998. Fennell spent 10 years in prison after he kidnapped and allegedly raped a woman while on duty as a police officer in 2007.

Since Reed’s conviction in Stites’ death, a suspected murder weapon has gone untested for DNA, forensic evidence has been reexamined and new witnesses have come forward. That has led to a growing chorus of voices .. to express their belief in Reed’s innocence and plead for Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to stop his death, scheduled for Nov. 20. On Tuesday morning, the newly-formed, bipartisan Texas House Criminal Justice Reform Caucus and two other Republicans joined the call, asking Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for more time to review Reed’s new findings ...

https://www.texastribune.org/2019/11/05/rodney-reed-texas-death-row-execution-greg-abbott-plea/

struggle4progress

(118,298 posts)

3. New witness claims he's innocent

Reply to dalton99a (Original post)

Wed Nov 6, 2019, 11:38 AM

Nov 2019

By Nicole Chavez, Ashley Killough and Sheena Jones, CNN
Updated 6:40 PM ET, Mon November 4, 2019

... Former inmate Arthur Snow Jr. filed an affidavit in court earlier this week saying Stites' fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, confessed to the murder years ago.

Snow had been serving a sentence for forgery at a DeWitt County, Texas, prison in 2010 when he made a deal with Fennell, who'd sought protection from other inmates, the document states. Snow was then a member of the Aryan Brotherhood gang, it states.

In his affidavit, Snow said he was with Fennell in the prison yard when Fennell started bragging about killing Stites ...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/02/us/rodney-reed-death-row-witness-affidavit/index.html

grantcart

(53,061 posts)

4. Kick

Reply to dalton99a (Original post)

Wed Nov 6, 2019, 11:40 AM

Nov 2019

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