Trish Choate|Wichita Falls Times Record News
A Wichita County rape case helped put Rodney Rodell Reed on death row for capital murder — even though he was acquitted of the sexual assault years before, a Wichita Falls defense attorney said.
Reed, 51, and his supporters — including a state lawmaker from Wichita Falls — are fighting for a reprieve as his Nov. 20 execution date approaches. He was convicted in 1998 in the strangling death of former Corpus Christi resident Stacey Stites, 19.
Prosecutors' use of the rape case as a basis for howdangerous Reed might be in the futurehas always bothered Wichita Falls defense attorney Bob Estrada, whowon Reed's acquittal of aggravated sexual assault in 1991.
"Somebody’s found not guilty," Estrada said Wednesday. "Yet the state is still free years later to retry the same case at the punishment phase of a capital murder trial to show why he should have gotten the death penalty.”
Estrada said he thinks that is legally possible but morally wrong.
Reed was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injectionin the death of Stites, who police believe was strangled with her belt. Stites'body was foundin Bastrop County southeast of Austin.
Reed wrongfully convicted?
Reed's family, supporters and a bipartisan group of 26 statelawmakers —including Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls —are calling on Gov. Greg Abbott to grant a reprieveto evaluate new evidenceraising doubts about his guilt.
There has beenno word from the governor's mansion as of Wednesday.
The Innocence Project, which represents Reed,contendsthe evidenceand new witness statements clears him and implicates Stite's fiancee, Jimmy Fennell.
Theformer police officer was convicted of a sex crimeand kidnapping in the years after Stites'death and served 10 years in prison.But Stites' family members feel that her killer has been found and convicted.
Issues of race have also been raised in relation to Reed's conviction and death sentence. Heis black.
Stites was white — as was the woman who accused him of rape in 1987 in Wichita Falls.
Estrada said Reed's family werestaunch advocates for him.
“They were extremely worried that he wouldn’t get a fair trial because it was a black man with a white ...alleged victim," Estrada said.
"But personally, I have a lot better faith in both the jury system and Wichita County than to think he wouldn’t get a fair trial. And he got a fair trial," he said.
The Wichita Falls rape case
Before thesexual assaultaccusationwas leveled against him in Wichita Falls, Reed was a senior at Hirschi High School, No. 41 on the Huskies football team and a state Golden Gloves champ in the then thrivingboxing scene, according to The Innocence Project.
His mom was a nurse, and his dad was amember of the Air Force.
All that was put on hold at10 a.m. Sept. 1, 1987, when police went to Hirschi High School andarrested Reed in connection with an aggravated sexual assaulton Aug. 25, 1987, in a northside Wichita Falls home.
“Rodney Reed represents to me the classic, he-said, she-said trial where the physical evidence dictates the outcome," Estrada said.
A 19-year-old woman told police she gothome from swimming just after midnight when a man grabbed her as she walked in the door.
Hedragged her into a bedroom, hit her several times and sexually assaulted her. Police believed the man had broken into her home through a small kitchen window.
It's worth noting the trialwas the first DNA case in Wichita County.
“He said he had sex with her, but it was consensual," Estrada said.
Reed's defenseduring the1991trial was that he met the womanat a party, went to her home forsex they both wanted and hit her once after she slapped and insulted him.Estrada highlighted to jurors a mismatch between physical evidence and testimony.
Wednesday, Estrada noted Reed was too big to fit through a small kitchen window, as well as that the way thewindow's glass shattered didn't fit with the prosecution's case.
"If it was broken into, why is most of the glass on the outside of the house instead of inside the house?" he said."That didn't make sense.”
A Wichita County jury took six hours to acquit Reedon Aug. 16, 1991, of aggravated sexual assaultin 30th District Court.
A conviction on his record
A month after hisacquittal, another woman stepped forward and accused him of sexually assaulting her at noon Sept. 15, 1987, in her home. Reed was arrested again.
“It was not deemed credible," Estrada said. "That case never got off the ground.”
Reed was not indicted on the charge.
But he did end up spending six months in Wichita County Jail, according to court documents.
He had been sentenced to one year of deferred-adjudication probation on a theft charge on Oct. 17, 1986, according to court records.
If Reed had successfully served out that year, he would have avoided having a conviction on his record.
Instead, now retired Judge Bob Brotherton ordered his probation revoked and sentenced him to serve the six months on Dec. 10, 1991, according to court documents.
Why? Because he hit the alleged sexual assault victim in the face — as had come out at trial — and didn't report to his probation officer for a month, according to court documents.
The rape case used in murder sentencing
Years later, prosecutors were still able to use the case that Reed was tried -- and acquitted on— to bolster their case for the death penalty.
Estrada said they retried the entire rape case during the punishment phase of Reed's capital murder trial in Bastrop County — even putting the alleged victim on the stand.
"The defense lawyers were calling me about it," Estrada said. "They were asking, how did you get the not guilty verdict?"
Reed's defense lawyers in the capital murder case knew the jury wouldhear about the rape case, Estrada said.
"Inthat situation, the jury had to have factored it in. The state asked them to," he said.
The central issue in the punishment phase ofacapital murder trial like Reed's is whether the defendant will commit violent criminal acts that would be a threat to society in the future, Estrada said.
"That’s what we call the future dangerousness issue," he said.
That law has no measureto define the possibility a person might be dangerous to society — but a man's life or death rests on the probability he will perform certain acts in the future, Estrada said.
“If somebody saysthere’s a 5 percentchance of rain, do people worry that it’s going to rain? But there’s still a probability," Estrada said.
The Innocence Project has listed several things about the case that raise doubts about Reed's conviction in Stites' death.
"One of the things I’ve wondered about is why they haven’t done a DNA test on the murder weapon," Estrada said.
"Ifthis, belt … was used to strangle Ms. Stiles down in Bastrop county, it should have been one ofthe very first things they would have tested," he said.
Most belts won't yield fingerprints, but there should be DNA from Stites' killer if there was contact, Estrada said.
"They didn’t hesitate to use DNA to determine whether or not his semen was in her body," he said. "Why would you not take the next step?"
Even now, authorities won't test the belt for DNA, Estrada said.
"If they did, then maybe we’d know," he said.
Trish Choate, enterprise watchdog reporter for the Times Record News, covers education, courts, breaking news,politics and more. She loves getting news tips.If you have a good one, contact Trishat tchoate@gannett.com. Her Twitter handle is @Trishapedia.
