By: Lily Hughes for the New Abolitionist
The
state of Texas maintains the most active execution chamber in the
nation, amid questionable practices and a host of controversial
executions.
Texas
has executed seven people already this year as of May 2014. The state
has put at least 515 people to death since executions were reinstated in
1982, far more than any other state.
Over
the last 15 years, there have been scandals at DNA labs, and
revelations of judges and lawyers sleeping through portions of capital
cases. Meanwhile, clear evidence of racial bias in sentencing, a lack of
funding for indigent defendants and an assembly line approach to
executions continue to plague the Texas system.
Despite
this, the courts here are known to rubber-stamp death penalty
convictions with little scrutiny. The worst offender is the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas.
The many problems in the application of the death penalty in Texas have undoubtedly led to the execution of innocent people.
While
a only a few people have won exoneration off Texas death row over the
years—Clarence Brandley, Randall Adams, and most recently, Anthony
Graves—many more of those executed are believed to have been innocent.
The
most prominent example is the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was
executed in 2004 for allegedly starting a house fire that resulted in
the death of his three children. However, a forensic review using
updated fire-science investigation methods has revealed that there
likely was no arson, and that the fire was accidental. This evidence was
available before Willingham’s execution, yet Texas authorities chose to
ignore it.
More
recently, the New York-based Innocence Project has been working to win a
posthumous exoneration for Willingham. Lawyers there uncovered new
evidence of a deal for a reduction in charges for a jailhouse informant
who fingered Willingham. In April of this year, the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles once again denied the request for a pardon for
Willingham.
There
are several death row prisoners currently facing execution in Texas
with strong cases for innocence, including the cases of Rodney Reed and
Louis Castro Perez.
Test all the evidence
The case of Louis Castro Perez
The
case of Louis Castro Perez—who, like Rodney Reed, is from central
Texas—has taken a path like Rodney’s case. Louis was sentenced to death
in 1999, convicted of the murders of his friends Michelle Fulwiler and
Cynda Barz, and Barz’s 9-year-old daughter Staci Mitchell.
However,
over the years, Perez’s family, and especially his sister Delia Perez
Myer, have fought to get evidence of his innocence heard by the courts,
including authorizing extensive testing to be done on foreign DNA
samples from several items left at the crime scene.
Perez
was convicted based on the presence of his DNA and fingerprints at the
crime scene. As both the prosecution and defense acknowledged, Perez had
been a guest in the home over the preceding days. According to him, he
left that morning to meet a friend, and when he returned later, he
encountered a badly beaten, yet still alive Cynda Barz at the front
door. He kneeled down to help her, asking what had happened. When he
tried to pick her up, she scratched him. He panicked and put her back
down, leaving a palm print next to her body. Perez then fled the scene.
As
Delia Perez Myer told reporter Rebekah Skelton in 2012, Perez fled
because of an arrest warrant he had for evading child support, “My first
blame is that my brother didn’t dial 911. He didn’t want to get
involved, and he just walked out the door.”
However,
Perez Myer also pointed out that Perez may have fled the scene of a
crime in progress, “We believe the actual murderer was still in the
home, because when Louis left, someone dead bolted the door behind him,”
she said.
When
Perez learned that he was a suspect in the murder, he went down to the
police station himself—he was certain that the evidence would show that
he was not responsible for the crime.
Regarding
the DNA evidence, there was unknown DNA identified on a rag wrapped
around a knife at the scene of the crime, as well as on a towel near one
of the victims. Crime scene investigators admitted under oath that the
Austin Police Department sent this material to the Department of Public
Safety (DPS) and asked them to only look for Perez’s DNA.
In
addition, Crime Scene Specialist Michelle Thompson testified at trial
that three possible murder weapons were found at the scene of the crime:
a Comal (a flat cooking griddle), a telephone cord, and a pair of
pantyhose. None of these items held any evidence of Perez’s DNA or
fingerprints.
More
recently, new laws in Texas have made access to DNA testing by
prisoners much easier, and that may lead to a breakthrough in the case.
More DNA evidence has been discovered and other evidence that hasn’t
been tested before has been made available to the defense.
Delia
Perez Myer told the New Abolitionist, “It wasn’t until recently that
our new attorneys and the Innocence Project based in New York were able
to secure permission from the Western District of the Federal Courts to
allow further DNA testing.” While results of that testing are not yet
available to the public, it’s hoped that they may bolster Perez’s claim
of innocence.
Perez
Myer pointed out further issues in the conviction of her brother: “It
is clear and evident that there were many errors in his case, including
prosecutorial misconduct, withholding of exculpatory evidence, serious
issues with the Travis County Medical Examiners not having their
licensing in order and retracting statements made during our
investigations; problems at the DNA Labs at the Texas Department of
Public Safety—and, of course, the more than 40 fingerprints found at the
crime scene that didn’t match Louis.”
Also,
like the Rodney Reed case, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has
recently released an opinion denying relief to Louis Castro Perez.
His
latest appeal was based on an issue of ineffective assistance of
counsel. The 5th U.S. Circuit had previously rendered a judgment denying
Perez relief. His lawyer then had 30 days to respond. However, she
failed to respond to a 30-day deadline for filing a new motion with the
district court. In fact, this attorney received notification of the
deadline and, without alerting Louis or the other consulting attorney on
the case, decided on her own not to respond to the motion, effectively
abandoning her client.
In
March 2012, after being made aware of the error, the court granted a
motion to allow Perez to reenter the appeal that his lawyer should have
made. However, in March of this year, the 5th U.S. Circuit vacated that
order and decided to let the original judgment of denial of relief
stand. Unless the 5th U.S. Circuit reconsiders that decision, Perez’s
case will go on the U.S. Supreme Court.
As
Perez Myer says of her brother’s case, “It is imperative that we move
forward with our innocence claim and find the true perpetrator in this
triple homicide from September 1998 where Louis’ friends Michelle Cynda,
and Stacey were so heinously murdered. We must ensure that no other
family go through what we have been through, having a wrongfully
convicted loved one sent to our torturous death row here in Texas.”
Over
the next few months, activists in Austin, alongside Perez Myer, will be
working to put together a screening of a new movie, The Road to
Livingston, which documents her visits to her brother on death row and
their relationship over the long years he has spent on death row.
Perez
Myer continues to speak around the country and the world about her
brother’s case, and to fight against the death penalty for everyone.
Seventeen years fighting to be heard
The case of Rodney Reed
On
December 4, 2013, about a dozen family members and supporters of Texas
death row prisoner Rodney Reed stood in front of the Texas State Capitol
holding signs surrounded by every local media outlet in Austin.
That
same day, down in New Orleans, Reed’s lawyers were presenting oral
arguments to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rodney’s case had
been denied an appeal by the highest criminal court in Texas and was
being heard for the first time by judges of the 5th Circuit. Because
oral arguments are rarely granted in federal district courts, hopes were
high among Reed’s family and supporters.
Reed’s mother Sandra spoke to the assembled reporters: “Knowing the evidence, knowing the truth keeps us strong,” she said.
For
years, Rodney’s family, legal team, and activists have fought to get
the evidence of that truth heard by the courts: Rodney Reed is innocent
on death row.
Rodney
Reed has been on death row for 17 years, convicted of the 1996 rape and
murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas. Although the state claims
Reed did not know Stacey, many witnesses attested to an ongoing affair
between Reed and Stites, lasting over the course of months. Stites
became engaged to Jimmy Fennell Jr., a police officer in the nearby town
of Giddings, during this time.
On
April 23, 1996, the truck that Stites and Fennell shared was found
abandoned at Bastrop High School in the early morning hours, and her
body was found dumped on a lonely stretch of country road later that
afternoon. She had been strangled, and the remains of a belt were found
next to her body. The subsequent autopsy revealed a small amount of
semen, although there was no clear evidence of bruising consistent with
rape.
One
year later, Rodney was charged with Stites’ murder. He was convicted on
the basis of a single piece of forensic evidence—semen DNA. Reed
admitted to being with Stites over a day before her murder, which
explained the presence of his DNA.
At
trial, the state argued that the semen was deposited just before the
time of Stites’s death, in order to bolster the rape and murder charges.
Reed’s defense has consistently argued that the semen found was much
older than the state claimed.
In
2012, the former medical examiner who testified for the prosecution
refuted the claim he made at trial that the semen had to be less than 24
hours old. In an affidavit for Reed’s defense, Robert Bayardo says that
his forensics findings were “misconstrued” by the prosecution, saying
that “My estimate of time of death…should not have been used at trial as
an accurate statement of when…Stites died.”
Another
medical examiner, Lloyd White examined the evidence in the case for the
Austin Chronicle back in 2002. Speaking to the state’s contention at
trial about when the sperm was deposited he said, “There have been
documented cases where you can recognize the spermatozoa in bodies that
have been dead for days.”
No
other physical evidence connects Reed to this crime. Meanwhile, a
pattern of other evidence links Stites’ fiancé and former police officer
Jimmy Fennell, Jr., to the crime. He was one of the first suspects in
the murder, and failed two lie detector tests when asked if he had
strangled Stites. DNA found on beer cans at the crime scene have been
linked to two police officers—evidence available at trial, which the
prosecution failed to give to the defense.
At
new hearings for Reed in 2006, one witness testified to seeing Stites
and Fennell in the early morning hours of the day of her murder. Another
witness testified while at the police academy together, she had
overheard Fennell say that he would strangle his girlfriend with a belt
if he found her cheating on him—which is how Stites died.
Despite
the fact that the state claimed Stites was killed in the truck owned by
her and Fennell, none of Reed’s fingerprints were found in the
truck—only Stites and Fennell’s fingerprints were present. There was
evidence of body fluid between the passenger and driver seat. Before the
defense could have access to the truck or request further testing of
any of this forensic evidence, the truck was returned to Fennell and he
sold it within days of the murder.
Fennell
is currently serving time, after being convicted of kidnapping and
sexually assaulting a woman he detained while policing in Georgetown,
Texas.
All of this and more was presented in Reed’s recent appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court. However, on January 15
of this year, the court upheld the lower court’s decision to deny the
appeal. The federal courts dismissed Bayardo’s new affidavit regarding
the semen DNA , saying that even substantively considered, Dr. Bayardo’s
affidavit would have “little probative value.”
The
5th U.S. Circuit time and time again dismisses various witnesses for
Reed as “not credible,” including witnesses who testified to the affair
between Reed and Stites, and witnesses who linked Fennell to Stites’s
murder.
The
decision by the court was shocking to Reed’s family, as his mother
Sandra said, “simply because all of the truth has been denied over the
past 17 years. The truth has been on the table pointing to someone else,
the DNA on the beer cans implicating two police officers in the very
beginning of this case, which was suppressed at trial.
“Rodney
had an alibi witness. The state said he didn’t, but he did—and the
reason why they could say that is because the judge Towslee denied the
alibi witness to testify. Nothing led to Rodney’s conviction except the
so-called DNA, and we know now that it was old.”
Despite
a mountain of evidence of Reed’s innocence, the courts continue to fall
back on procedural bars to the admission of this evidence. That is why
Reed’s family and supporters continue to try to build public awareness
and outcry against any execution for Rodney.
The
threat of execution and the constant denial by the courts have taken a
toll on Rodney and his family. “Until a person is in our place, you
can’t really describe it,” Sandra said. “It’s a hard pill to swallow—the
corruption and injustice that’s dwelling in my son’s case.”
Despite
this, Sandra said that “Rodney’s handling things very well—he’s
remaining strong for himself. The truth keeps us all strong, and
believing that justice will prevail.”
On February 14
this year, his family and supporters were out in the streets again—this
time picketing the Bastrop County Courthouse, asking the district
attorney to drop the charges against Rodney or grant him a new trial.
“The
best way to go right now is to get the petitions to Bryan Goertz, the
district attorney, and rallying here in Bastrop,” said Rodrick Reed,
Rodney’s brother and his active supporter, “Right now, it’s in his
hands, so I think the best thing to do is make noise here in Bastrop.”
Activists
have plans to go back with our petition for Reed—over 10,000 people
have signed an online version demanding a new trial.
Rodney’s
case is now heading to the U.S. Supreme Court, but despite this, the
state of Texas has already attempted to have an execution date set.
While one hasn’t been set yet, the urgency of the situation could not be
more dire.
Fighting back
These are just two of the cases in which death penalty abolitionists in Texas are fighting to win a hearing.
There
are also the many cases of prisoners sentenced to death under the
unjust Texas “Law of Parties,” where a person can be sentenced to death,
even though they did not kill anyone. Jeff Wood was convicted under
this unjust law and has been on Texas death row for the past 16 years.
There
are cases like those of Hank Skinner, who has fought for years to get
further DNA testing of several pieces of evidence from the crime scene,
only to be told that that some crucial evidence has been lost or
misplaced.
As
Delia Perez Myer puts it, “I am certain that we have executed innocent
men and women in Texas, from Carlos de Luna to Todd Cameron Willingham
and many others. It would be naïve of me to think that Louis is the
first person who has ever been innocent on death row.”
When
asked the most important thing for abolitionists to do right now,
Sandra Reed responded, “We have to be steady and put the fight to end
the death penalty in the spotlight, because there’s too many people
going through what we are. There’s many other mothers out there who are
in my shoes, and we need to find them, to help them.”
The
family of both Reed and Perez, alongside activists in Texas, have vowed
to protest in every way possible any execution dates. Abolitionists
here and around the world will continue to expose the injustices of the
Texas death penalty and demand that the courts and the state of Texas
acknowledge that evidence matters.
Lawmakers
should not turn a blind eye to the innocence of death row prisoners in
Texas. While the mistake of Cameron Todd Willingham cannot be undone, it
can in the case of Rodney Reed and of Louis Castro Perez.
What you can do to help spread the word
Sign and share the petition for Rodney Reed online at change.org.
Organize a screening of the documentary State vs. Reed, streaming online at youtube.com.
Find out about screenings of The Road to Livingston in your area. Follow the film on Facebook.
Check out our solidarity photo campaign for Rodney Reed on Instagram at Justice4Rodney. Send us your own solidarity photo to post to: austincedp@nodeathpenalty.
Get involved with Texas activists who are fighting executions. E-mail austincedp@
Order a bundle of newsletters from marlene@nodeathpenalty.org—do a tabling at your school or in your community to help build support. Share articles from the New Abolitionist online at nodeathpenalty.org.
Become a monthly sustainer and help sustain the efforts of the CEDP! Read more about the sustainer program in the New Abolitionist.
- See more at: http://nodeathpenalty.org/new_
