Supreme Court clears way for Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed to try to use DNA to prove innocence

The Supreme Court docket cleared the way in which on Wednesday for Texas dying row inmate Rodney Reed to hunt post-conviction DNA proof to attempt to show his innocence.

Reed claims an all-White jury wrongly convicted him of killing of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old White lady, in Texas in 1998.

Texas had argued that he had waited too lengthy to deliver his problem to the state’s DNA procedures in federal courtroom, however the Supreme Court docket disagreed. Now, he can go to a federal courtroom to make his declare.

The ruling was 6-3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the courtroom and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Since Reed’s conviction, Texas courts had rejected his numerous appeals. Celebrities corresponding to Kim Kardashian and Rihanna have expressed assist, signing a petition asking the state to halt his eventual execution.

The case places a brand new deal with the testing of DNA crime-scene proof and when an inmate could make a declare to entry the expertise in a plea of innocence. So far, 375 individuals in america have been exonerated by DNA testing, together with 21 who served time on dying row, in line with the Innocence Challenge, a gaggle that represents Reed and different shoppers in search of post-conviction DNA testing to show their innocence.

Kavanaugh, in his opinion Wednesday, stated that the courtroom agreed to listen to the case as a result of federal appeals courts have disagreed about when inmates could make such claims with out working afoul of the statute of limitations. Kavanaugh stated Reed might make the declare after the Texas Court docket of Felony Appeals finally denied his request for rehearing, rejecting an earlier date set out by the appeals courtroom.

“Vital systemic advantages ensue from beginning the statute of limitations clock when the state litigation in DNA testing instances like Reed’s has concluded,” Kavanaugh stated.

He famous that if any issues with a defendant’s proper to due course of “lurk within the DNA testing legislation” the case can proceed by way of the appellate course of, which might finally render a federal lawsuit pointless.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

Alito, joined by Gorsuch in his dissent, stated Reed ought to have acted extra rapidly to deliver his attraction. “As an alternative,” Alito wrote, “he waited till an execution date was set.”

Alito charged Reed with making the “primary mistake of lacking a statute of limitations.”

Reed has been on dying row for the homicide of Stites.

A passerby discovered Stites’ physique close to a shirt and a torn piece of belt. Investigators focused Reed as a result of his sperm was discovered inside her. Reed acknowledged the 2 have been having an affair, however says that her fiancé, a neighborhood police officer named Jimmy Fennell, was the final to see her alive.

Reed claims that over the past twenty years he has found a “appreciable physique of proof” demonstrating his innocence. Reed claims that the DNA testing would level to Fennell because the homicide suspect. Fennell was later jailed for sexually assaulting a lady in his custody and Reed claims that quite a few witnesses stated he had threatened to strangle Stites with a belt if he ever caught her dishonest on him. Reed seeks to check the belt discovered on the scene that was used to strangle Stites.

The Texas legislation at difficulty permits a convicted particular person to acquire post-conviction DNA testing of organic materials if the courtroom finds that sure situations are met. Reed was denied. He got here to the Supreme Court docket in 2018 and was denied once more. Now he’s difficult the constitutionality of the Texas legislation arguing that the denial of the DNA testing violates his due course of rights. 

However the fifth US Circuit Court docket of Appeals held that he waited too lengthy to deliver the declare. “An harm accrues when a plaintiff first turns into conscious, or ought to have turn into conscious, that his proper had been violated.” The courtroom stated that he grew to become conscious of that in 2014 and that his present declare is “time barred.” 

Reed’s attorneys argued that he might solely deliver the declare as soon as the state appeals courtroom had dominated, on the finish of state courtroom litigation. In courtroom, Parker Rider-Longmaid stated that the “clock doesn’t begin ticking” till state courtroom proceedings come to an finish. He stated Texas’ studying of the legislation would imply that different procedures within the appellate course of are “irrelevant.”

This story has been up to date with further developments.