Stay updated with breaking news from Statement Reed. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
A bad day on the road still beats a good one off it. ♪ progressive helps keep you out there. ♪ ingenious space- neat nest™ by fasaving design. so you can go from this... to this. farberware neat nest™. stacked & intact™ on may 4th, 1998 rodney reed went on trial for the murder of stacey stites in bastrop county, texas. in her opening statement reed's attorney lid qua jackson made a surprising claim.
>> rodney reed was now on death row, in livingston, texas. >> the state was to try to kill me. that's what it was. and i'm like, man, this is all crazy, right? i have no witnesses, no alibis, nothing? i don't have a defense. >> reed claims his dna was recovered from stacey because of a consensual encounter they had the day before stacey's murder. he says he first met stacey the year before she was killed. >> i met her at a diamond shamrock in bastrop, right there in the back in the game room area, right at the jukebox is when i met her. it was a michael jackson song, and i got the music playin...
>> at sentencing, tanner told the jury that reed's dna also matched semen found in two previously unsolved rapes. >> one was a sexual assault that had occurred six months prior to stacey, in bastrop, along the railroad tracks. the other was a sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl from 1989. >> tanner brought these women and four others to court, to describe in graphic detail how reed had assaulted them. the jury took only four hours to reach their verdict. >> 12 jurors quickly departed the courthouse leaving behind a death sentence for rodney reed. >> consider all the facts and i believe that j...
I told him, rodney, do you understand where you are? here in this little racist town, anything could happen. >> bastrop is about 30 miles outside of austin, but it's also about 30 years behind austin. there was an atmosphere in the town of -- >> racism. okay? point blank, period. >> jimmy brown was reed's first lawyer, but left the case before it went to trial. from the very beginning, brown saw a troubling racial bias. >> this case seemed to be premised on the fact that good white girls don't have sex with thugs. that is literally the theory of the state. because other than that, what is the ...
>> former georgetown police sergeant jimmy fennell was sentenced to ten years in prison today. >> some believe today's move could have had an impact on a decade's old murder conviction. >> fennell's conviction shined a new light on stacey's murder. >> it did give me hope, because it was saying what i had been saying all the time, you know? >> but reed's defense was making little progress in the courts. desperate for a new strategy, rodney decided to go through his old case documents and discovered results from tests that had not been completed before his trial of two beer cans found near stace...