Supreme Court considers death row prisoner's DNA test request

A woman was found strangled to death with her own belt, her body left on the side of a road. Detectives found signs on the body that suggested rape, and a man's sperm was found in her, which was matched to a suspect through DNA testing.

They arrested a suspect. The suspect was black, the victim was white.
The black man claimed that he had been having an affair with the woman. The defense suggested that the woman's fiance, who was a white police officer, may have been the one who killed her. (perhaps he had found out about the affair and killed her in a fit of rage)

The suspect is in prison on death row awaiting execution in Texas. The defense wants the authorities to test other crime scene evidence for DNA, to see if there is evidence that another person may have been present at the scene. Especially the belt that was used to strangle the victim, since it could be possible skin cells may have been left behind.

The case is being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.

What do you think? Would it just be a waste of valuable money to subject all the evidence to additional DNA testing? Suppose they find someone else's DNA at the scene. Would it really prove anything?

The black suspect's name is Rodney Reed, and the victim was Stacey Stites, aged 19 at the time.

U.S. Supreme Court mulls Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed's DNA testing bid, Andrew Chung, Reuters, October 11, 2022


This sounds like a difficult case. I usually immediately form a pretty strong opinion about these type of stories, but this one I'm not sure what to think.

It's not completely impossible she could have been having an affair with him. I have personally known of very attractive young white women who had a casual sexual affair with a black man who was much bigger and less attractive than them, simply because they wanted the big black (*)(*)(*)(*). And her fiance could have been abusive towards her, that is not that uncommon with police officers. Maybe even the abuse is part of what drove her to have an affair with a black man.
On the other hand, if he did rape her and is responsible for her death, he definitely deserves the death penalty. That type of situation suggests a strong likelihood that it was he who raped her, rather than any alternative explanation.

 

Once police had a match for Stacey Stites' DNA, they decided to test it against some of the other unsolved rape cases in Bastrop dating back at least 10 years to see if they saw any other matches.

According to prosecutors, Reed's DNA also matched two unsolved rape cases. One of them involved a brutal assault against a 12 year old girl.

During the punishment phase of Reed's trial for the murder of Stacey, both the other female victim and the 12 year old girl victim testified, although neither was able to recognize Reed as their attacker from his face. The jury was also shown bite marks on the 12 year old girl's face from the brutal assault.

Reed did not go to trial for these other separate attacks because he was already on trial for the capital murder of Stacey.

"Everybody says he's innocent, and they just don't know the whole story," said Schlueter, Reed's last alleged victim.

Many of Reed's supporters point out that Reed has never been convicted of rape beyond Stacey Stites. His brother, Rodrick Reed, said that he thinks Rodney Reed may have been framed. "What makes you think they won't set him up, make him look to be like a rapist? They are very corrupt down here," Rodrick Reed said.

Bryce Benjet is Rodney Reed’s current lawyer. He works with the non-profit Innocence Project.
"What we have here is we have a bunch of allegations," Benjet said. "They're all very different. They go back over the course of a long time, and they were never really vetted."

Rodney Reed was convicted by an all-white jury of raping and killing Stacey Stites on May 29, 1998, and was given the death sentence.

Rodney Reed: Texas man on death row for Stacey Stites murder | kvue.com, November 14, 2019

It sounds like Reed is being blamed for multiple rapes. Yet I suppose it is kind of unfair to Reed to be using evidence of other alleged rapes against him when there was not really any specific trial for those crimes.

DNA evidence is pretty strong.
Could local law enforcement detectives have had a reason to falsify evidence in order to secure a conviction, because they believed this black man was guilty and did not want to let a black man escape punishment for the rape and murder of a white woman?

 

Have his lawyers provided any evidence that he was actually having an affair with the victim?

Obviously pre texting era, may be harder to prove. If they were having an affair, doesn't prove innocence, but gives a plausible explanation for why his sperm was inside her

 

I know this is might be a little too complicated for most of you to understand, but because the prosecutor only presented the jury with the other alleged victims during the punishment phase of the trial, even if hypothetically evidence were to emerge that the DNA test results linking him to other two victims were incorrect or falsified, then there would still technically not be a legal reason to overturn his murder conviction, since the evidence used to convict him was presented during the punishment phase, not the earlier part of the trial when the jury was deciding whether to convict of murder.

In other words, even if we prove that the detectives were corrupt and framed him, and if there was nothing to tie him to the other two rapes, that still might not affect his murder conviction. Because the jury chose to convict him without the evidence about the other women. But it would be a completely valid reason to appeal the death sentence, however.

But despite the legalities, in my view it SHOULD very much affect the determination of guilt if we found out those DNA tests linking him to other victims were wrong.

 

more evidence in favor of Reed:
Stacey Stites' sister, Oliver, said that Stacey's former co-worker, who was 16 at the time of Stacey Stites' death, began claiming several years ago that Stacey Stites confessed to her over a lunch break that she was cheating on her fiance with a black man.

more evidence against Reed:
At the request of the defense police had conducted additional testing and allegedly found Reed's DNA in the victim's rectum.
It's more unlikely that a woman would engaged in that form of intercourse if the sex had been consensual, and rather tends to point to a brutal rape having taken place. (Although it is not completely impossible for fluids from the vagina to be able to migrate to the rectum in some unusual situations)

But here's something else to consider. When people think that an accused person is guilty, or think that accused person is innocent, and have been convinced to the point of being "sure" about it, sometimes law enforcement will tamper with evidence to falsely incriminate the person, and sometimes witnesses will lie.

No one wants to let someone they think is guilty of a horrible crime go, and no one wants an innocent man to be put to death, so certain people might do unethical things in an attempt to cause the "right" outcome to result.

The question we have to ask ourselves is, if the local Texas law enforcement had become convinced that this was the man who had committed the rape-murder, and probably committed other brutal rapes as well, could they have tampered with the results of subsequent DNA evidence (that were carried out after the first test) to make sure the tests would incriminate their suspect? Not trusting the justice in the court system.

 

I'd prefer the state simply not have the authority to murder people, even horrible criminals. But I don't have a better solution (supporting them indefinitely isn't acceptable either). Perhaps there is an argument for criminals to work in prison and pay off the cost of their defense (and pay off the cost of their repeated attempts to appeal after the fact as well ...and not at the $0.25 per hour joke wages we use to pretend we're being fair...). This would likely be a problem in the 'for profit' system many of our prisons operate under, so that would need to be addressed as well. But I do think in the case where technology (like DNA) may provide new evidense where it wasn't previously available, it should be explored. Tis better a 100 guilty men go free than 1 innocent be falsely imprisonned (or killed). ...in a society that values liberty and justice, anyway.

 

Eplore the DNA and do an investigation into why they didnt test for DNA previously.

 

DNA as evidence wasn't nearly as common or refined in 1996 as it is now. It was around, but not ubiquitous or easy. Pretty common to go undone if other evidense was strong. To go back and redo ALL the cases for which the DNA evidence still exists and probably should be done, would be crazy expensive, first and foremost just from a manpower perspective in a justice system that is already backlogged by years.

...which is an awful excuse to not do it, but also still a legit one. I mean, I don't want my taxes to go up for it.

 

So why did they do a DNA test for the semen instead of the weapon? The semen didn't kill her. I think it wasn't a technical issue but a an issue of assumptions being made.

 

Probably because they didn't feel they needed to. They felt they already had plenty enough evidence.

What I think you don't understand is there wasn't really a specific "sample" that they found to test, which they didn't test. The defense now wants investigators to reexamine the evidence, to test it even though there is no indication they will find any DNA at all.

The defense already wanted investigators to test additional things in the past, and the investigators did it, and it just ended up making Reed look even more guilty.

When you phrase it like that, it does sound like a good question.
But a test is probably harder and more expensive to do on something like a belt because there's not really any specific spot to test, the amount of any residue would probably be so small, microscopic, and they are not even sure they would find any DNA, if they tried to carry out a test.

Even if they find another man's DNA on that belt, it probably would not prove Reed was innocent. The DNA could have gotten on the belt through various other ways. Especially since the defense suspects the real murderer may have been the woman's own fiance.

 

I dunno, but I would wager it was a lot easier to get definitive results from semen than from other biological matter in 1996.

 

Considering a man is on death row and the DNA evidence could either exonerate or nail him down I would think there is no such thing as too expensive for DNA testing

 

There is a possibility it could exonerate him, but most likely it will not do that.

Like I already explained, even if it does "exonerate" him, it still wouldn't "prove" he was not guilty.
Which just creates less of pressing reason to do the test, even considering the possibility it might lead to an "exoneration".

When the only reason the prisoner is released is because the evidence of his guilt goes from a 99% certainty down to a 98% certainty, that's not going to be seen as really all that great of a thing.

 

DNA is 100%. It's either there or it's not.

 

Just because they find someone else's DNA would not mean that was the person who killed the victim.
Think about it.

I personally think that finding traces of DNA material inside the victim's sexual areas is much more incriminating than finding DNA from tiny traces of skin cells on the victim's belt that was used to kill her. DNA on the belt could have gotten there through a variety of different ways long before the victim was killed.

 

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