Bastrop, Texas Events, News & Stories

Austin, Tx–The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest tribunal for criminal case appeals, rejected a plea from Rodney Reed of Bastrop for a new trial this week. It may have been his last state appeal, leaving federal courts the only avenue to avoid a date with execution by lethal injection.

Since 1998 Reed has been on Texas death row for the 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Defense lawyers urged the court to set aside the earlier conviction for capital murder because of evidence accumulated over the last decade of bad acts, some involving women, alleged or committed by Jimmy Fennell Jr. who was living with Stites in Giddings at the time of her death near Bastrop.

In an unsigned opinion, the court said recent revelations about Fennell, formerly a police officer in Giddings and Georgetown, do not weaken the evidence pointing to Reed as the killer. The evidence against Reed remains sufficient for a finding of guilt, according to the appeals court.

Fennell is serving a 10-year prison term for kidnapping and sexual misconduct with a woman in his custody in 2007 while he was on duty as a Georgetown police officer. Reed’s defense lawyers also argued that other sexual misconduct charges against Fennel since 1997 point to him as Stites’ killer. The court disagreed.

Reed has argued that DNA evidence recovered from Stites’ body resulted from a secret sexual laison the two had been carrying on prior to her death.