Rodney Reed Appeal Denied by Supreme Court as Bid for DNA Testing Is Blocked

On March 24, 2026, the Supreme Court declined to review an appeal from Rodney Reed, leaving intact a lower federal ruling that bars his request to test crime-scene evidence he says could prove his innocence.

Reed, who was sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, has sought DNA testing of a webbed belt prosecutors say was used to strangle Stites as she walked to work in Bastrop, Texas. Prosecutors have resisted the testing, and state and lower federal courts have upheld that refusal despite Reed’s offer to have his defense team cover testing costs. Reed maintains he had a consensual relationship with Stites and has long pointed to her fiance, former police officer Jimmy Fennell, as the likely killer; Fennell has denied involvement and was released from prison in 2018 after serving time on a sexual assault conviction.

The high court left the appeals-court decision unchanged for the second time in under three years. Three justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — registered a dissent, criticizing prosecutors’ refusal to permit testing that defenders say could identify whose DNA was on the belt. Earlier litigation included a 2023 Supreme Court order sending aspects of Reed’s challenge back to lower courts; state judges have ruled that Texas’s DNA-testing statute does not cover items deemed contaminated, a point Reed’s lawyers contest given the state’s control of the evidence. Reed’s case has also drawn public attention from prominent supporters.