HOUSTON (July 1, 2009)--Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, 41, lost another appeal Wednesday before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which rejected his claims that new evidence points to a former Central Texas police officer as the killer of a 19-year-old woman in Bastrop County 13 years ago.
Reed was sentenced to die for the murder of Stacey Stites, who was sexually assaulted and then killed on April 23, 1996.
In a sixth petition to the state's highest criminal appeals court, Reed's lawyers argued they had evidence pointing to Stites boyfriend as the person who abducted, raped and murdered her.
Stites' fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, is a former Georgetown police officer who was sent to prison for abducting and having improper sexual activity with a woman in his custody.
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in September 2008 after he was convicted of kidnapping and improper sexual activity with a person in custody in a case involving the rape of a drunken woman after Fennell responded to a domestic disturbance call.
The appeals court said Wednesday the information submitted by Reed fails to show innocence and fails to show that prosecutors withheld it.
