Free Rodney Reed

Rodney Reed’s attorney says new information should prove convicted man’s innocence.

By Isadora Vail
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, July 17, 2008

The attorney for death row inmate Rodney Reed filed a motion Wednesday asking an appeals court for a new trial because of what he cited as new evidence against a former suspect in the murder of Stacey Stites.

Bryce Benjet, Reed’s attorney, said the new evidence about Jimmy Fennell Jr., Stites’ fiancé at the time, includes what Benjet said was Fennell’s personal Web site that contains sexual content and violent images.

Reed is on death row for the 1996 strangling of 19-year-old Stites in Bastrop County, but Reed’s attorney says Fennell, then a Giddings police officer, should have been investigated more thoroughly as a suspect.

Benjet said other recent evidence includes a woman’s allegations that Fennell acted improperly as a Georgetown police officer when he pulled her over and Fennell’s admitting in May to kidnapping and having sex with a woman in custody in October.

Fennell resigned from the department in January and is awaiting trial in the kidnapping incident.

“I think it confirms everything about Jimmy Fennell’s character that we’ve said from the beginning,” Benjet said. “If the jury knew everything that we know now, I’m confident that a jury would never have convicted Reed.”

Fennell’s attorney, Bob Phillips, said Benjet is becoming desperate and that the conviction won’t be overturned because Reed’s DNA was found on Stites’ body.

“Every time there is another news story, it has the potential to taint any jury pool for my case, whether the allegations are true, false, reckless or utterly unfounded,” Phillips said.

Fennell pleaded guilty in May to kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a person in custody and would have received two years in prison and 10 years probation under the plea deal, but District Judge Burt Carnes denied the agreement and set a September trial date.

Fennell is accused of driving an intoxicated woman to a secluded area, asking her to dance for him and then raping her as she leaned on his police cruiser, according to court documents.

Benjet said an image of a woman leaning over the back of a car in revealing clothing on what he says is Fennell’s MySpace page is relevant because of the allegations of raping the woman against his car.

The Web site does not contain Fennell’s name, and the owner of the site is only pictured in full police SWAT gear, including a face mask, but Benjet said an acquaintance of Fennell came forward with the site and said Fennell used it to solicit women for sex.

Phillips said there is no way to positively identify whose page it is and that the images Benjet cites were not posted by the site’s owner.

“I have no idea if this is Jimmy Fennell’s Web site, but a lawyer can allege anything he wants in a writ of habeas corpus,” Phillips said. “Proving it is quite another matter.”

ivail@statesman.com; 246-0053