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Rodney Reed - Innocent on Death Row

http://nodeathpenalty.org/get-the-facts/rodney-reed-innocent-death-row

Übersetzung eines Artikels von Intercept aus den USA auf indymedia-linksunten

Rodney Reed: wird Texas einen Unschuldigen hinrichten? 

https://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/128341

Seventeen years fighting to be heard

The case of Rodney Reed

On December 4, 2013, about a dozen family members and supporters of Texas death row prisoner Rodney Reed stood in front of the Texas State Capitol holding signs surrounded by every local media outlet in Austin.

That same day, down in New Orleans, Reed’s lawyers were presenting oral arguments to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rodney’s case had been denied an appeal by the highest criminal court in Texas and was being heard for the first time by judges of the 5th Circuit. Because oral arguments are rarely granted in federal district courts, hopes were high among Reed’s family and supporters.

Reed’s mother Sandra spoke to the ­assembled reporters: “Knowing the ­evidence, knowing the truth keeps us strong,” she said.

For years, Rodney’s family, legal team, and activists have fought to get the evidence of that truth heard by the courts: Rodney Reed is innocent on death row.

Rodney Reed has been on death row for 17 years, convicted of the 1996 rape and murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas. Although the state claims Reed did not know Stacey, many witnesses attested to an ongoing affair between Reed and Stites, lasting over the course of months. Stites became engaged to Jimmy Fennell Jr., a police officer in the nearby town of Giddings, during this time.

On April 23, 1996, the truck that Stites and Fennell shared was found abandoned at Bastrop High School in the early morning hours, and her body was found dumped on a lonely stretch of country road later that afternoon. She had been strangled, and the remains of a belt were found next to her body. The subsequent autopsy revealed a small amount of semen, although there was no clear evidence of bruising consistent with rape.

One year later, Rodney was charged with Stites’ murder. He was convicted on the basis of a single piece of forensic evidence—semen DNA. Reed admitted to being with Stites over a day before her murder, which explained the presence of his DNA.

At trial, the state argued that the semen was deposited just before the time of Stites’s death, in order to bolster the rape and murder charges. Reed’s defense has consistently argued that the semen found was much older than the state claimed.

In 2012, the former medical examiner who testified for the prosecution refuted the claim he made at trial that the semen had to be less than 24 hours old. In an affidavit for Reed’s defense, Robert Bayardo says that his forensics findings were “misconstrued” by the prosecution, saying that “My estimate of time of death…should not have been used at trial as an accurate statement of when…Stites died.”

Another medical examiner, Lloyd White examined the evidence in the case for the Austin Chronicle back in 2002. Speaking to the state’s contention at trial about when the sperm was deposited he said, “There have been documented cases where you can recognize the spermatozoa in bodies that have been dead for days.”

No other physical evidence connects Reed to this crime. Meanwhile, a pattern of other evidence links Stites’ fiancé and former police officer Jimmy Fennell, Jr., to the crime. He was one of the first suspects in the murder, and failed two lie detector tests when asked if he had strangled Stites. DNA found on beer cans at the crime scene have been linked to two police officers—evidence available at trial, which the prosecution failed to give to the defense.

At new hearings for Reed in 2006, one witness testified to seeing Stites and Fennell in the early morning hours of the day of her murder. Another witness testified while at the police academy together, she had overheard Fennell say that he would strangle his girlfriend with a belt if he found her cheating on him—which is how Stites died.

Despite the fact that the state claimed Stites was killed in the truck owned by her and Fennell, none of Reed’s fingerprints were found in the truck—only Stites and Fennell’s fingerprints were present. There was evidence of body fluid between the passenger and driver seat. Before the defense could have access to the truck or request further testing of any of this forensic evidence, the truck was returned to Fennell and he sold it within days of the murder.

Fennell is currently serving time, after being convicted of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a woman he detained while policing in Georgetown, Texas.

All of this and more was presented in Reed’s recent appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court. However, on January 15 of this year, the court upheld the lower court’s decision to deny the appeal. The federal courts dismissed Bayardo’s new affidavit regarding the semen DNA , saying that even substantively considered, Dr. Bayardo’s affidavit would have “little probative value.”

The 5th U.S. Circuit time and time again dismisses various witnesses for Reed as “not credible,” including witnesses who testified to the affair between Reed and Stites, and witnesses who linked Fennell to Stites’s murder.

The decision by the court was shocking to Reed’s family, as his mother Sandra said, “simply because all of the truth has been denied over the past 17 years. The truth has been on the table pointing to someone else, the DNA on the beer cans implicating two police officers in the very beginning of this case, which was suppressed at trial.

“Rodney had an alibi witness. The state said he didn’t, but he did—and the reason why they could say that is because the judge Towslee denied the alibi witness to testify. Nothing led to Rodney’s conviction except the so-called DNA, and we know now that it was old.”

Despite a mountain of evidence of Reed’s innocence, the courts continue to fall back on procedural bars to the admission of this evidence. That is why Reed’s family and supporters continue to try to build public awareness and outcry against any execution for Rodney.

The threat of execution and the constant denial by the courts have taken a toll on Rodney and his family. “Until a person is in our place, you can’t really describe it,” Sandra said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow—the corruption and injustice that’s dwelling in my son’s case.”

Despite this, Sandra said that “Rodney’s handling things very well—he’s remaining strong for himself. The truth keeps us all strong, and believing that justice will prevail.”

On February 14 this year, his family and supporters were out in the streets again—this time picketing the Bastrop County Courthouse, asking the district attorney to drop the charges against Rodney or grant him a new trial.

“The best way to go right now is to get the petitions to Bryan Goertz, the district attorney, and rallying here in Bastrop,” said Rodrick Reed, Rodney’s brother and his active supporter, “Right now, it’s in his hands, so I think the best thing to do is make noise here in Bastrop.”

Activists have plans to go back with our petition for Reed—over 10,000 people have signed an online version demanding a new trial.

Rodney’s case is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, but despite this, the state of Texas has already attempted to have an execution date set. While one hasn’t been set yet, the urgency of the situation could not be more dire.


Fighting back

These are just two of the cases in which death penalty abolitionists in Texas are fighting to win a hearing.

There are also the many cases of prisoners sentenced to death under the unjust Texas “Law of Parties,” where a person can be sentenced to death, even though they did not kill anyone. Jeff Wood was convicted under this unjust law and has been on Texas death row for the past 16 years.

There are cases like those of Hank Skinner, who has fought for years to get further DNA testing of several pieces of evidence from the crime scene, only to be told that that some crucial evidence has been lost or misplaced.

As Delia Perez Myer puts it, “I am certain that we have executed innocent men and women in Texas, from Carlos de Luna to Todd Cameron Willingham and many others. It would be naïve of me to think that Louis is the first person who has ever been innocent on death row.”

When asked the most important thing for abolitionists to do right now, Sandra Reed responded, “We have to be steady and put the fight to end the death penalty in the spotlight, because there’s too many people going through what we are.
There’s many other mothers out there who are in my shoes, and we need to find them, to help them.”

The family of both Reed and Perez, alongside activists in Texas, have vowed to protest in every way possible any execution dates. Abolitionists here and around the world will continue to expose the injustices of the Texas death penalty and demand that the courts and the state of Texas acknowledge that evidence matters.

Lawmakers should not turn a blind eye to the innocence of death row prisoners in  Texas. While the mistake of Cameron Todd Willingham cannot be undone, it can in the case of Rodney Reed and of Louis Castro Perez.

What you can do to help spread the word

Sign and share the petition for Rodney Reed online atchange.org.
http://change.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-rodney-reed

Organize a screening of the documentary State vs. Reed, streaming online
at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLTcV664IgU .

Find out about screenings of The Road to Livingston in your area. Follow the
film on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TheRoadToLivingston .

Check out our solidarity photo campaign for Rodney Reed on Instagram
atJustice4Rodney http://instagram.com/justice4rodney . Send us your own
solidarity photo to post to:     austincedp@nodeathpenalty.org

Get involved with Texas activists who are fighting executions.
E-mail austincedp@nodeathpenalty.org or
visit us onFacebook https://www.facebook.com/AustinCEDP

Das ist eine Übersetzung einer "get the facts" Infosammlung von der Campaign to End the Ceath Penalty (CEDP):

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Gerechtigkeit für Rodney

WEG MIT DEM HINRICHTUNGSDATUM!

HER MIT DEM DNA-TEST!

Rodney Reed hat am 5. März 2015 einen Hinrichtungstermin, obwohl wichtige DNA-Tests seine Unschuld beweisen könnten – wenn sie denn von den Gerichten zugelassen würden. Rodney sitzt seit 1998 in Texas in der Todeszelle. Er wurde 1996 wegen Mordes an einer Frau im texanischen Ort Bastrop, Stacey Stites, zum Tod verurteilt. Im März 2006 hörte Richterin Reve Towslee-Corbett (Tochter des ursprünglichen Prozessrichters) Aussagen von mehreren Zeugen, die Staceys Verlobten, den ehemaligen Polizeibeamten Jimmy Fennell, mit dem Verbrechen in Verbindung brachten. Dabei zeigten Rodneys Anwälte auch auf, dass einige dieser Augenzeugenberichte der Verteidigung zur Zeit des Verfahrens gegen Rodney vorenthalten worden waren. Dennoch verweigerten das Oberste Berufungsgericht des Staates Texas und das 5. US-Berufungsgericht Reed seine Berufung. Verheimlichte Augenzeugenberichte sind nicht das einzige Problem in diesem Fall. Hier eine Auswahl weiterer Fakten:

·        Der einzige forensische Beweis der Anklage, der Rodney mit dem Verbrechen in Verbindung brachte, war Samen, der Staceys Leiche entnommen worden war. Die Verteidiger bei Rodneys Prozess versäumten es, Zeugen vorzuladen, die Aussagen zu einer weithin bekannten sexuellen Beziehung zwischen Rodney und Stacey hätten machen können, was Rodneys DNA in Staceys Körper erklärt hätte. Außerdem versäumten die Anwälte es, das Zeugnis eines Experten in Frage zu stellen, der fälschlicherweise aussagte, der fragliche Samen könne nicht älter als 24 Stunden sein.

·        Der im Prozess gehörte Gerichtsmediziner hat vor kurzem erklärt, seine Befunde hinsichtlich einer Vergewaltigung Stacey seien entweder selbst falsch gewesen oder von der Anklage fehlinterpretiert worden.

·        Während der ursprünglichen Ermittlungen war Staceys Verlobter, Fennell, der Hauptverdächtige. Unter anderem war er einen Lügendetektortest zu der Frage „Haben Sie Stacey Stites erdrosselt?“ durchgefallen.

·        Die Polizei nahm keine Durchsuchung von Stacey und Fennels Wohnung vor, obwohl dies der letzte Ort war, an dem sie lebend gesehen wurde. Noch dazu gab die Polizei Fennells Kleinlaster, den Stacey in der Mordnacht gefahren hatte, sofort an Fennell zurück, der ihn prompt einige Tage später verkaufte.

·        Zwei am Tatort aufgefundene Bierdosen wurden positiv auf die DNA mindestens eines örtlichen Polizeibeamten getestet. Dieses Testergebnis wurde der Verteidigung zur Zeit des Prozesses gegen Rodney nicht mitgeteilt.

·        Bei der Gerichtsanhörung 2006 sagte Martha Barnett aus, sie habe Stacey und Fennell am Morgen des Mordes zusammen gesehen. Mary Blackwell bezeugte, sie habe Fennell während eines Kurses an der Polizeischule sagen hören, wenn seine Freundin ihn betrügen würde, würde er sie töten, und er würde sie mit einem Gürtel erwürgen – genau die Art, auf die Stacey getötet wurde. Beide Frauen bezeugten, sie hätten ihre Aussagen bereits zur Zeit des ursprünglichen Verfahrens der Anklage mitgeteilt.

·        Rodneys Verteidiger haben bei Fennell ein Muster der Gewalttätigkeit aufgezeigt, zu dem auch das Stalken und Bedrohen ehemaliger Freundinnen gehörte. Fennell verbüßt derzeit eine Gefängnisstrafe wegen Vergewaltigung einer Frau, die sich in seinem Gewahrsam befand, als er noch Polizeibeamter der Stadt Georgetown in Texas war.

·        Rodney Reed, der Afroamerikaner ist, wurde in Bastrop von einer ausschließlich weißen Jury des Mordes an einer weißen Frau schuldig gesprochen, wodurch ihm das Recht auf eine Jury von Seinesgleichen verweigert wurde.

Informiert euch auf der Website nodeathpenalty.org

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

facebook.com/texasinjustice * austincedp@nodeathpenalty.org 

Sandra and Rodrick Reed react to death warrant for Rodney Reed (July 21, 2014)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRqxS62wjXA&feature=youtu.be

Wer selbst für die Kundgebung mobilisieren möchte, kann Flyer (A6 doppelseitig) ausdrucken, in s/w kopieren und verteilen. Kopiervorlage hier:

Stoppt die Hinrichtiung von Rodney Reed!

Flyer (A6 doppelseitig)

http://mumia-hoerbuch.de/text/rodneyreedsflyer_beidseitig.pdf

die Lage in Texas kommt in Bewegung:

Die Hinrichtung von Rodney Reed wackelt... (24.02.2015)

https://linksunten.indymedia.org/en/node/135777