Category Archives: Death Penalty News

BREAKING NEWS: Rodney Reed granted a stay of execution by CCA

We have just learned that the execution of Rodney Reed has been stayed for now, by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA). The fight isn’t over until a new trial is granted, but this is great news!!

Says KVUE: “The ruling from the appeals court states Reed and his lawyers believe there is newly discovered evidence in Reed’s case that supports his claim that he is innocent.

The court placed a stay on Reed’s execution, scheduled for March 5, “pending further order of this Court.”

Reed’s lawyer, Bruce Benjet, released the following statement Monday:

We’re extremely relieved that the court has stayed Mr. Reed’s execution so there will be proper consideration of the powerful new evidence of his innocence. We are also optimistic that this will give us the opportunity to finally conduct DNA testing that could prove who actually committed the crime.”

You can read the full ruling from the CCA here.

Thanks to everyone who helped shine a light on this injustice. Public pressure and the work of Rodney’s attorneys is truly making a difference for Rodney and his family!

Check back to this site for updates on this case and planned events as information comes in.

Amnesty International issues URGENT ACTION about Rodney Reed

10 Replies

Thanks to the efforts of the student chapter of Amnesty International at the University of Texas, Rodney Reed is the subject of an Amnesty International Urgent Action. We are thankful to Amnesty for recognizing the grave injustices in Rodney’s case and for sharing this information with its membership!

Their fact sheet is available as a pdf for easy sharing, and includes information for those who wish to write a clemency letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, asking them to stop Rodney’s execution. You can send an email asking for clemency through their website here. Thanks to Amnesty for helping us take Rodney’s case truly international!

Amnesty International is one of the world’s largest human rights organizations with offices in over 80 countries.

Breaking News: Forensic experts believe Stacey Stites died before midnight

2 Replies

Today, Rodney’s attorneys filed a motion to request a new trial based on the opinions of three forensic pathologists:

The filing comes on the heels of affidavits from forensic pathologists Dr. LeRoy Riddick (who has now written four opinions on Stites’s death since 2003), former Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York Dr. Michael Baden, and Dr. Werner Spitz, whose textbook Medicolegal Investigation of Death is recognized as “the bible of forensic pathology.” All three conclude four inconsistencies [with the state’s version of events].

Attorneys also filed two affidavits that confirm that Rodney and Stacey were involved in a consensual relationship before she was murdered. Read the whole story at the Austin Chronicle

Dean Smith: On the Passing of a Death Penalty Abolitionist

Leave a reply

Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, is a supporter of Rodney and has signed on to our clemency campaign. His newest piece, a memorial to Tar Heels basketball coach Dean Smith and his legacy as a death penalty abolitionist, is a reminder of the intersection between sports and social justice:

“Dean Smith was clear in his opposition to the death penalty. He knew death did not solve death and that the sentencing was racially biased. He knew that like a fixed game the results were unfair. Right now in North Carolina, we have had over seven individuals, mostly black, in recent years exonerated from death row declared wrongfully charged and convicted who would have been executed. This is more than any other state in the country. Based on this reality we can surmise that through the death penalty and the faults of racial and class bias we have probably killed innocent black and poor white persons in our state. We should have and still need to listen to Coach Smith’s vocal opposition and abandon the death penalty.”

RIP Coach Smith. We’ll keep fighting.

Micheal Jordan and Coach Dean Smith. Photo courtesy of StarNewsOnline

http://www.thenation.com/blog/197385/dean-smith-passing-death-penalty-abolitionist#

Don’t Let Texas Execute an(other) Innocent Man!

7 Replies

Greg Abbott has been governor of Texas for less than two weeks but he’s already overseen two executions. On Jan. 20, the day before Abbott was sworn in as the 48th governor of Texas, retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens acknowledged evidence that proved “beyond a shadow of doubt” that Texas executed an innocent man in 1989. Carlos de Luna was convicted of the murder of Wanda Lopez, a convenience store clerk, during a 1983 robbery in Corpus Christi. Stevens referred to a book The Wrong Carlos by Columbia Law School professor James Liebman, saying that it had sufficiently demonstrated that “there is a Texas case in which they executed the wrong defendant and the person they executed did not in fact commit the crime for which he was punished.”

Share this excellent summation of Rodney’s case published in The New Abolitionist, presented in the context of Texas’ shameful disregard of innocence claims and its bloody record. Don’t let Rodney become another innocent person executed by our state! Get the facts and send a clemency letter to save Rodney’s life.

http://nodeathpenalty.org/new_abolitionist/december-2014-issue-62/dont-let-texas-execute-innocent-man

NYT Editorial Board calls executions a “horrendous brutality”

Leave a reply

Today the New York Times reported on the US Supreme Court’s involvement in executions in Oklahoma. The court will hear a challenge to Oklahoma’s choice of drugs used in lethal injection. The Editorial Board has taken a stand against the “humane” facade of the death penalty, calling capital punishment an “abhorrent practice”. They write:

It is time to dispense with the pretense of a pain-free death. The act of killing itself is irredeemably brutal and violent. If the men on death row had painlessly killed their victims, that would not make their crimes any more tolerable. When the killing is carried out by a state against its own citizens, it is beneath a people that aspire to call themselves civilized.

Later they quote Alex Kozinski, a federal appellate judge in California who wrote:

But executions “are brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should it. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.”

As the United States’ “paper of record”, we welcome the New York Times’ strong condemnation of the death penalty and its reflection of the growing shift away from executions.

Exonerated former death row prisoners Gary Drinkard, Ron Keine, and Shujaa Graham lead a march in front of the Texas State Capitol

“Governor Abbott is a Catholic lone-wolf on Death Penalty”

Leave a reply

The Houston Chronicle posted an opinion piece on the contradictory nature of Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s Catholic faith and his commitment to the death penalty. Writes Rev. Marty Troyer:

Today I heard you [Abbott] invoke God’s grace for yourself, while consciously planning to refuse it for those on Texas’ death row; including Arnold Prieto, age 41, who is scheduled to be your first execution on the second day of your Governorship (Wednesday). Perhaps I’m just confused. Or perhaps the cognitive dissonance I and others experience between your faith and politics is an integrity gap that will have grave implications.

Undoubtedly it will further the cycle of violence in Texas (“those who live by the sword will die by the sword”). Likely it will lead to the death of an innocent; and thus unmask the moral bankruptcy of our social imagination in the same way Jesus’ unjust execution did.

Pope Francis has called for an end to the death penalty . Perhaps new governor Abbott can be swayed by his church’s highest official. If you are a member of the faith community and would like to join the growing number of Austin-area clergy in support of Rodney, please contact us to add your or your congregation’s name!

Goodbye to Rick Perry, Texas’ deadliest governor

Leave a reply

An excellent piece at Salon.com by Luke Brinker on the deadly legacy of Rick Perry. He leaves office having overseen the execution of almost 300 men and women.

Of course, certain individuals are more likely to be executed than others. African Americans account for a disproportionate share of those executed on Perry’s watch; while blacks make up just 11.6 percent of Texas’ population, they represented 40 percent of those put to death during Perry’s tenure. Whites (44.4 percent of the population) accounted for another 40 percent of executions, while Latinos (38.2 percent of the population) accounted for the remaining 20 percent.

Conservatives may argue that the overrepresentation of African Americans on death row isn’t an overrepresentation at all — that the figures simply reflect who commits crimes, and that’s that. This notion may be comforting to those who would rather not confront the problems of systemic racism that continue to plague our criminal justice system, but it has no basis in reality: As with other states, Texas is substantially more likely to seek the death penalty against a black person convicted of killing a white person than against those convicted of killing a black person.

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/20/texas_executed_279_people_on_rick_perrys_watch/