Since 1989, more than 375 innocent prisoners have earned their freedom through post-conviction DNA testing and another 2,000 have been exonerated without the use of that scientific tool. Daniel Medwed, Northeastern law professor and GBH News legal analyst, believes this is just the tip of the innocence iceberg. Medwed joined Mary Blake on Morning Edition today to discuss a case being heard in Texas this week involving a death row inmate named Rodney Reed that illustrates the problems with wrongful convictions and the difficulties in overturning them. This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity.
Blake: Let’s start at the beginning. What crime was Rodney Reed convicted of?
Medwed: Back in 1996, a young white woman, Stacey Lee Stites, was found strangled to death in rural Bastrop County, Texas. Her fiancé was a white police officer named Jimmy Fennell. According to him, they watched television together before she left for work at 3 a.m. After her body was located, investigators compiled a rape kit that had sperm cells that were later traced to Rodney Reed, a local Black man. At first, Reed denied knowing Stites but later acknowledged that they had been having an affair. So, the DNA evidence plus Reed’s obfuscation made him a prime suspect. What clinched the case was expert testimony from a medical examiner putting the time of death at some point after 3 a.m., which basically excluded her fiancé as a suspect. A jury convicted Reed and voted for the death penalty.
Blake: What makes you think Reed might be innocent?
Medwed: Several things. First, his account of an affair with the victim has been corroborated by a number of the victim’s friends who have come forward to confirm that she was having a clandestine affair with Reed. Second, a closer look at the forensic evidence indicates she likely died far earlier than the medical examiner indicated at trial, suggesting she was in the company of her fiancée Fennell when she was killed.
Third, there is mounting circumstantial evidence that Fennell committed the crime. Not only does he have a history of violence against women, but several witnesses suggest Fennell knew about the affair and was absolutely livid about it. Recently, the defense located a witness who claims that Fennell even confessed to killing her. This case just has so many hallmarks of a wrongful conviction — flawed forensic evidence, police and prosecutorial tunnel vision, the ugly specter of racial bias — that it screams out for a fair hearing.
Blake: Daniel, a court hearing about this new evidence just started yesterday. Why has it taken so long for Reed to get this new evidence heard?
Medwed: Believe it or not, this is Rodney Reed’s tenth state post-conviction motion and he’s lost all of the preceding nine. The short answer is that the system places a premium on finality. After you lose at trial the presumption of innocence converts into a presumption of guilt, and it becomes increasingly hard to rebut that presumption over time. A host of obstacles in the appellate and post-conviction process — things like short statutes of limitations, strict standards of review, narrow visions about what claims may be raised — reinforce this concept of finality, which occasionally comes at the expense of accuracy.
Blake: What about the Supreme Court? Did it ever weigh in on this case?
Medwed: Reed has begged the Supreme Court to review his case no less than four times, but the Court has never agreed to do so. In general, the Court rarely takes on fact-based innocence cases — instead it tends to focus on accepting cases with national legal implications or where there is dispute in the lower courts about a question of law. After the Court denied review for the fourth time back in 2020, Justice Sotomayor wrote separately to express her disapproval. She wrote that “[m]isgivings this ponderous should not be brushed aside even in the least consequential of criminal cases; certainly they deserve sober consideration when a capital conviction and sentence hang in the balance.” She expressed hope that Texas state courts would provide this sober consideration and I guess we will have to see if her hope is realized as the hearing unfolds over the next two weeks or so.
WATCH: Daniel Medwed on overturning wrongful convictions
