Rodney Reed

Rodney Rodell Reed (born December 22, 1967) is an American death row inmate who was convicted on May 29, 1998, by a Bastrop County District Court jury for the April 1996 abduction, rape, and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old resident of Giddings, Texas. Although Reed initially denied knowing Stites, after his DNA matched semen inside Stites's dead body, Reed said that he was having a clandestine affair with Stites and that they had consensual sex the day before her death. During the penalty phase of the trial, the state argued for capital punishment on the basis of Reed being suspected in the rapes of four women and a 12-year-old and an attack on another woman. Reed was sentenced to death on May 29, 1998, and is incarcerated at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit death row facility in Polk County, Texas. His conviction and death sentence remain controversial. Reed was scheduled to be executed on November 20, 2019, but doubt over Reed's guilt led to bipartisan support for a stay of his execution from Texas state legislators, as well as numerous celebrities and other public figures. On November 15, 2019, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles unanimously recommended that Texas Governor Greg Abbott grant Reed a 120-day reprieve. Later that day, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals indefinitely stayed Reed's execution to review his claims of actual innocence. His execution was further delayed in 2023 when the Supreme Court authorized Reed to seek DNA testing on the murder weapon.