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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