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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed, who was convicted of murdering a young grocery store clerk in 1996, can get a new shot at obtaining new DNA testing.
Reed was convicted of the rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, who was strangled to death in Bastrop County, Texas.
The court on a 6-3 vote overturned a lower court ruling that said Reed, who has long maintained his innocence, had waited too long to make the request.
In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court found that the two-year window for filing a civil rights claim in federal court only starts counting down after state court proceedings are finished.
“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,” Kavanaugh wrote.
The case prompted an unusual split on the court, with Kavanaugh joined by the three liberal justices and two conservatives, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, in the majority. Three other conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, dissented.
Alito wrote that the majority’s conclusion was “clearly wrong” on when the clock starts ticking and questioned whether it would be unfair for defendants to be required to file their claims sooner.
Parker Rider-Longmaid, one of Reed’s lawyers, said in a statement that the ruling was a “critical step toward the ultimate goal of getting DNA testing.”
That testing would include crime scene evidence that has not been previously analyzed, including the belt used by the killer, Rider-Longmaid added.
Reed’s claims of innocence have been championed by celebrities, including reality television star Kim Kardashian, media mogul Oprah Winfrey and the singer Rihanna, as well as a bipartisan group of Texas lawmakers in the weeks leading up to his planned execution in November 2019.
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