BASTROP — Rodney Reed’s defense team presented witnesses Wednesday who contradicted prosecutors’ assertions that Stacey Stites did not know Rodney Reed and that she was killed earlier than they say she was.
Reed received the death penalty after he was convicted in 1998 of Stites' strangulation. Stites' body was found by the side of a rural road in Bastrop County on April 23, 1996, with Reed's sperm inside her.
The hearing on Wednesday in state District Court in Bastrop was ordered by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in 2019 after defense attorneys presented new evidence they said exonerated Reed. The hearing started Monday and is expected to run two weeks.