PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Shaver’s findings will be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will have the final say on whether Reed, 50, gets a new trial. Defense lawyer Bryce Benjet said late Monday that he remained hopeful that the appeals court would reject Shaver’s findings, which are advisory, after examining the new evidence. “We have now proven everything the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals asked us to show, and we look forward to presenting this substantial case to the court,” he said. “Over the past 20 years, the evidence of. Mr. Reed’s innocence continues to mount, and we are confident that he will ultimately be vindicated.”
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STORY: "Judge: Bastrop’s Rodney Reed, on death row, should not get new trial," by reporter Chuck Lindell, published by The American Statesman on January 9, 2018.
GIST: "In a major setback for death row inmate Rodney Reed, a judge has recommended that the Bastrop man’s request for a new trial be denied by the state’s highest criminal court. Defense lawyers had argued that newly discovered evidence bolstered their theory that Stacey Stites was murdered in 1996 by her fiance, Jimmy Fennell, not Reed. They pointed to a 2016 TV interview given by Curtis Davis, who
was good friends with Fennell and Stites, in which Davis recalled
Fennell saying 20 years ago that he had gone out drinking and returned
to the Giddings apartment he shared with Stites between 10 and 11 p.m.
the night before she died. Fennell had told investigators that he returned to the
apartment around 8 p.m. and was with Stites until she left for work
around 3 a.m. During a four-day hearing in Bastrop in October, defense
lawyers argued that Davis’ recollection, when combined with recently
developed forensic evidence, refuted the prosecution theory that Reed
killed Stites between 3 and 3:30 a.m. on April 23, 1996, as she drove to
her job at a Bastrop grocery store. Instead, they argued, the evidence
shows that Stites was killed before midnight, making Fennell the only
likely suspect. Visiting Judge Doug Shaver, however, was unimpressed by the
evidence in findings of fact that were dated Jan. 5 but filed Monday in
court. Shaver noted that Davis testified during the October hearing
that Fennell never provided a specific time of his return home and that
Davis surmised it was after 10 p.m. Davis’ memory also proved to be unreliable several times during his testimony during the October hearing, the judge wrote. In contrast, Shaver said Carol Stites — the mother of Stacey
Stites, who lived in the same apartment building as her daughter —
credibly testified that Fennel had arrived home “right before dusk,”
which would have been around 8 p.m. Shaver’s findings will be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals, which will have the final say on whether Reed, 50, gets a new
trial. Defense lawyer Bryce Benjet said late Monday that he remained
hopeful that the appeals court would reject Shaver’s findings, which are
advisory, after examining the new evidence. “We have now proven everything the Texas Court of Criminal
Appeals asked us to show, and we look forward to presenting this
substantial case to the court,” he said. “Over the past 20 years, the
evidence of. Mr. Reed’s innocence continues to mount, and we are
confident that he will ultimately be vindicated.” Defense lawyers used the controversy over Fennell’s 20-year-old
statements to introduce testimony by Dr. Michael Baden, a renowned
forensic pathologist who concluded that Stites had been killed before midnight, disputing conclusions that she had been strangled shortly after 3 a.m. Baden said evidence showed that Stites had been dead for
several hours before she was driven to Bastrop in the passenger seat of a
pickup that was found several miles from where her body had been left
by the side of a rural road. There was a mucus-like substance found on the passenger side
floorboard — discharge from the nose and mouth that is related to
decomposition and takes three to four hours to develop, Baden said. In
addition, crime scene photos and videotape revealed blood had pooled in
the front of Stites’ body — “fixed lividity” that shows Stites had lain
face down for at least five hours before her body was left on a rural
roadside in an upright position, he said. Benjet argued that the forensic evidence and Davis’
conversation with Fennell introduced enough uncertainty to order a new
trial for Reed. But in his findings, Shaver said defense lawyers failed to show that Baden’s testimony could have swayed jurors at Reed’s trial. “Baden’s opinions … would not have affected the outcome of
trial because they simply present an alternative explanation that the
jury could have rejected, the evidence of (Reed’s) guilt was strong, and
(defense lawyers) presented no credible evidence of a consensual
relationship between he and Stites, which would have been needed to
explain why his semen and saliva were found on a dead woman,” Shaver
wrote.
Fennell, who is serving a 10-year prison term for kidnapping
and sexually assaulting a woman in his custody as a Georgetown police
officer in 2007, declined to testify during the October hearing, but his
lawyer said Fennell continues to maintain his innocence in Stites’
murder."
The entire story can be found at:
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.statesman.com/news/rodney-reed-should-not-get-new-trial-judge-says/cZjCll5agQBImsiFTj5RHM/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/c
