The Supreme Court revived a Texas death row inmate’s case in a ruling Wednesday, letting him request post-conviction DNA testing he says will show he did not murder the woman he claims to have been having an affair with — and instead show her fiance committed the crime.
Rodney Reed had requested DNA testing of a belt used in the homicide, arguing it would show he was wrongly convicted.
Texas courts — and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals — said he filed the request too late after the trial court initially denied the motion for DNA testing. Other circuit courts, though, have said the statute of limitations for such post-conviction DNA tests don’t begin to run until all state proceedings are exhausted.
The high court agreed in a 6-3 holding with the latter standard and sent the case back down to the lower courts, giving Reed the potential to use DNA to prove he is wrongly incarcerated.
“In Reed’s case, the State’s alleged failure to provide Reed with a fundamentally fair process was complete when the state litigation ended and deprived Reed of his asserted liberty interest in DNA testing,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh for the court.
He was joined by the court’s three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett also joined the majority opinion.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented, joined by Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, arguing the two-year statute of limitations at the end of Reed’s state court proceedings should have been deemed exhausted, noting they didn’t see how Reed’s due process rights were infringed.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed his own dissenting opinion in which he said the court shouldn’t have considered the case because federal courts don’t have jurisdiction over state court judgments.
“Reed’s action should be dismissed for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. Federal district courts lack appellate jurisdiction to review state-court judgments, and Reed’s action presents no original Article III case or controversy between him and the district attorney,” Justice Thomas wrote.
Parker Rider-Longmaid, a lawyer for Reed, said the high court’s majority decision gives his client a critical step toward getting the DNA test he needs.
“We are grateful that the court has kept the courthouse doors open to Mr. Reed, a Black man who has spent 24 years on death row for the murder of a White woman with whom he was having an affair, a crime he has steadfastly maintained he did not commit. As Mr. Reed’s briefs explain, extensive evidence developed in post-conviction proceedings both points to Mr. Reed’s innocence and implicates the victim’s fiance,” said Mr. Rider-Longmaid.
The case focused on the deadline for filing a federal civil-rights claim, challenging the constitutionality of the Texas law governing DNA testing.
More than a decade ago, the high court ruled prisoners can pursue civil-rights actions for DNA testing, but there are conflicting lower court rulings on when the statute of limitations begins to run on those requests.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, for example, said the clock on claims for testing begins to run at the conclusion of litigation in state court. However, the 5th and 7th Circuits ruled the statute of limitations for DNA tests starts upon the first denial by a trial court — despite any appeal.
The court’s decision in Reed’s case sides with the 11th Circuit approach.
Reed was convicted for the 1998 murder of Stacey Stites. His sperm was found in her vagina, but he insists the two had an ongoing relationship.
At the time, Stites was engaged to a police officer who was the last one to see her and failed a polygraph test, according to court papers.
