“Mr. Reed’s execution is less than one month away, meaning Texas is frighteningly close to executing an innocent man.”

“Mr. Reed’s execution is less than one month away, meaning Texas is frighteningly close to executing an innocent man. Between the medical and scientific evidence, and multiple new, credible witnesses, the original case trial has been completely deconstructed and disproven,” said Bryce Benjet, a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project and Reed’s lead counsel. “It should be clear to anyone who looks at the evidence in this case that Mr. Reed did not commit the sexual assault or murder of Stacey Stites. To execute Mr. Reed would be a grave miscarriage of justice that will create irreparable damage to public confidence in the accuracy and fairness of the Texas criminal justice system.”

Reed, now 51, was arrested nearly a year after Stites’ April 1996 slaying when his DNA surfaced in an unrelated sexual assault. He long has insisted he and Stites had a secret and relationship, accounting for his DNA on her body, and that her police officer fiance more likely was her killer.

Reed’s lawyers previously have referred to what they describe as the case’s racial aspects. Reed is black and Stites was white.

Reed is scheduled for execution on November 20, 2019. Now after 21 years of confinement, there is a substantial evidence that exonerates Reed and implicates Stites’ fiancé Jimmy Fennell, a local police officer.

In addition to this witness, an amicus brief was filed this past Monday in the United States Supreme Court by a group of Texas law enforcement officers in support of Reed’s innocence. In the past few weeks, a substantial amount of new information demonstrating Reed’s innocence has come to light. Three new witnesses, who knew Fennell at the time of Stites’ murder, have come forward with information corroborating the existing evidence of Reed’s innocence and establishing a violation of due process. In order to further investigate this newly discovered evidence, the withdrawal of the impending execution date is required under the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.

Forensic experts who implicated Reed at trial have recanted their opinions, and leading forensic pathologists have since concluded that the state’s theory of Reed’s guilt is medically and scientifically impossible. Despite overwhelming evidence of Reed’s innocence, Texas courts have consistently refused to consider the forensic evidence proving Reed did not commit the crime and denied access to DNA testing that can confirm Fennell’s guilt.

Reed’s call for justice, commutation and exoneration have recently been taken up by high-profile individuals, including Dr. Phil McGraw, Kim Kardashian West and Mark Cuban. This month, Dr. Phil featured Reed’s case on his television show. Dr. Cyril Wecht, a forensic pathologist who has examined Stites’ autopsy report, insisted, “without hesitation, that this is one of the clearest, unequivocal cases of gross misjudgment – of a travesty of justice – that I’ve ever seen.”