Justice Denied

I posted in December 2019 about the stayed execution of Rodney Reed, a two decades-long death row black man in Texas who was convicted in 1998 of murdering 19-year old white woman Stacey Stites. [See https://www.jgswriter.com/post/die-lol-1]

A hearing on a motion for reconsideration of the guilty verdict and death sentence was originally scheduled for last September. Then it was continued to this past February. Then to a little more than a week ago.

But the May 17 hearing also never happened.

Now the hearing is scheduled to be held July 19 2021, according to the Austin American-Statesman.

As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.

But what's another couple of years' further delay after a 20 plus year mistaken conviction of an innocent black man?

Worse, perhaps, according to Reed's brother, Rodrick Reed, pending defense discovery motion finally to release to the defense all evidence in the case--including the death-by-strangulation ligature, a brown woven belt, for modern DNA testing--was denied by the judge assigned to the case: Judge J.D. Langley, whom the defense has thrice argued unsussessfully to have removed from the case.

“It was a motion for discovery for them (the prosecution) to turn over any and all evidence that they had and for them to give us the belt so it could be tested and have further testing and stuff, and all that stuff was denied,” Rodrick Reed said.

Reed and Stites were secret lovers, so naturally his DNA was found inside her. But in Texas, semen is all you need to convict an innocent black man of murdering a white woman.

And to cancel Rodney Reed's precious freedom with callously racist and barely concealed and obviously corrupt handwaving.

[Editor's Note: today SCOTUS agreed to let Ridney Reed prove his innocence via forensic testing of evidence for DNA that the State of Texas never bothered with, including the murder weapon, the belt allegedly used as a ligature.]