Reed v. Texas
The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied. Statement of JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR respecting the denial of certiorari. On April 23, 1996, the body of 19-year-old Stacey Lee Stites, a white woman, was found in the brush near a road in Bastrop County, Texas. The last person known to have seen Stites was her fiancé, a white man and local police officer named Jimmy Fennell. Vaginal swabs collected from Stites’ body revealed three intact spermatozoa. The DNA from that sample matched that of petitioner Rodney Reed, a black man, who initially denied knowing Stites but eventually admitted that they had been having an affair. The State later charged Reed with Stites’ murder. Aside from the DNA match, the State found no other physical evidence implicating Reed. At trial, much of the State’s case centered on the estimated time of Stites’ death and the estimated time during which the spermatozoa could have been deposited. Fennell—waiving a prior invocation of the Fifth Amendment— testified that he and Stites had watched television together on the evening of April 22 before going to sleep, and that Stites had left for work at her usual time around 3 a.m. on April 23. Using expert testimony, the State pinpointed her time of death at sometime around 3 a.m. or shortly thereafter on April 23.