Thursday, February 19, 2015

Texas, USA: Stop the Execution of Rodney Reed in Texas - URGENT ACTION Act before March 5!

      Rodney Reed is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 5 March.  He was sentenced to death in 1998 for a murder he says he did not commit. Three leading forensic experts have added their voices to the serious doubts about the reliability of his conviction.
     New expert opinion and other evidence now calls into question the state’s theory of the crime and the forensic evidence on which it was based. The prosecution had argued that Rodney Reed’s DNA had been left during a rape contemporaneous with the murder, which the state said had occurred around 3am on 23 April 1996.
     Two people have also recently signed statements that they were aware of the relationship between Rodney Reed and Stacey Stites. Previous witnesses who attested to the relationship were deemed unreliable by the courts because of their relationship to the defendant or for other reasons. The two who recently signed these statements are former work colleagues of the victim. More than a dozen relatives of Stacey Stites have also stated that they do not believe Rodney Reed is guilty of her murder.
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