source: Texas Metro News

published: 21 March 2026

Image Credit: Pexels/Duda at www.pexels.com

Rodney Reed faces execution in Texas despite mounting evidence of innocence and bipartisan support. [His] execution was stayed this month by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, and a lower court will now examine the evidence that Reed’s lawyers believe will show he is innocent.

The case of Rodney Reed, who is scheduled to be executed in Texas on Nov. 20, is unique not only because of the celebrities promoting his claims of innocence, from Oprah to Beyonce to Dr. Phil. Numerous lawmakers—with the support of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas—are calling for the execution to be halted. So are several law enforcement officers, who told the U.S. Supreme Court that the “the forensic case against Mr. Reed has been completely obliterated.”

The case is unique also because of the sheer volume of evidence implicating someone else for the crime for which Reed was sentenced to die, the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, in Bastrop, Texas. Although his semen was found on Stites’s body, Reed, who is black, has maintained he was in a consensual relationship with Stites, who was white. Witnesses have come forward with evidence that points to former police officer Jimmy Fennell, who was Stites’ fiancé at the time of her death.

Late last month, Reed’s lawyers at the Innocence Project unveiled an affidavit from a man saying he heard Fennell boast, “I had to kill my nigger-loving fiancé.” Fennell has never been charged and, through a lawyer, has denied killing Stites. (Jordan Smith at The Intercept offers the most comprehensive account of where the case stands).

And yet, Reed’s situation also is all too common: every death row prisoner in the United States faces high barriers when they want to argue they are innocent after trial. Reed isn’t even the only death row prisoner this month facing execution while struggling to present new evidence of innocence.

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