Students Rally around Death Row Inmate

Junior hosts letter-writing party in support of man whose capital punishment case received nationwide attention, outrage

The impending execution of one death row inmate in Texas has
sparked outrage nationwide after new evidence cast doubt on his guilty verdict.
In one UTD apartment, students gathered to try and save his life.

Pizza, cider and snacks are laid out on international
political economy junior Sarah Whipple’s dining room table. In the living room,
she and other UTD students handwrite letters to Governor Greg Abbott as well as
the Texas Board of Parole and Pardons. All of this effort is to stop the Nov.
20 execution of Rodney Reed, who was sentenced to death in 1998 for the rape
and murder of 19-year-old Stacy Stites on April 23, 1996 near Austin.

New evidence, including a confession from the victim’s
then-fiance, has caused public outcry and prompted celebrities such as Rihanna
and Oprah to speak out in support of Reed. After hearing about Reed’s case,
Whipple organized a letter-writing party to try and stop the execution.

“Social media is great, petitions are great, but sometimes
you just have to flood someone’s office with letters, you know. I feel very
strongly that he’s innocent, but even if he’s not, he doesn’t deserve to be
murdered by the state,” Whipple said. “I wanted to encourage people to really
engage with that and do something tangible.”

Abbott has commuted the sentence of one death row inmate
since taking office in 2015, breaking with the practices of previous governors
and granting clemency for the first time in over ten years. According to the
Death Penalty Information Center, Texas accounted for more than half of the
nation’s executions in 2018, with 13 inmates dying by lethal injection. Despite
these facts, psychology senior Ruqiya Barreh said student activism is still
necessary.

“In spite of the apparent injustice that Abbott has
displayed, especially concerning death penalty cases, I think if we allow him
to continue these things without taking a stand against these issues, then that
means oppression has won,” Barreh said. “We can’t allow ourselves to sit idle
when there is something we can do, however small it is just because we believe
it’s impossible or not worth it. At the end, these are lives that we are
fighting for, so it’s important to put in any effort that we can.”

Reed’s case, Whipple said, has racial undertones. According
to an article from The Washington Post, one of Fennell’s colleagues said the
former officer had told him that his fiance was “involved with a n——-.”
Additionally, the inmate that Fennell confessed to, a former member of the
Aryan Brotherhood, said Fennell told him that he had to kill his “n——- loving
fiance.”

“You have this dynamic where there’s a white cop who was
trying to join the Aryan Brotherhood and there’s a black man who’s always
maintained his innocence,” Whipple said. “Which one do we look at with more
skepticism? I think that sort of colors it both at the time of the original
trial, but I think still today, (it) would color peoples’ perception of
innocence.”

The prosecution’s case lay in DNA evidence from a semen
sample from Stites’ body that matched Reed. At the time, Reed initially denied
knowing Stites, but eventually admitted to a consensual affair with the victim.
While prosecutors point to Reed’s reluctance as evidence of his guilt, Reed
said the details of the situation, including the fact that at the time of their
affair, Stites was engaged to a white police officer, kept him from admitting
the truth.

Former chief staff attorney and executive director of the
Innocence Project of Texas Natalie Roetzel, who teaches Innocence Project
courses at UTD said Reed’s conviction makes it harder to prove his innocence in
a court of law.

“The law explains that in order to be convicted of a crime,
a defendant must be found guilty ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’ Unfortunately,
this means the burden placed on the defendant to have his or her name cleared
post-conviction goes up and oftentimes requires that the defendant present new
evidence of innocence that wasn’t available at the time of trial,” Ossenfort
said in an email interview. “Legally, this is a difficult burden to satisfy,
which means that the defendant has a very uphill battle when seeking
exoneration or other legal relief from the courts.”

Reed is being represented by the Innocence Project, not the
Innocence Project of Texas. Although both organizations are part of the
Innocence Network, the two are legally separate entities.

The event held in support of Reed isn’t the first time
Whipple and her friends have become involved in on-campus activism,
international political economy senior Samee Ahmad said.

“I think it’s really important to build collective movements
on campus, especially because students, though they may not realize it, are
very important parts of national political discourse. This apartment was also
where we drew up some of the posters for the Botham Jean protest two weeks ago.
Two nights ago we had a Kashmir solidarity protest,” he said. “It’s important
to have this space, even though it may seem futile, but the long-term goal and
the vision is to build a coherent, rigorous and involved incubator of student
activism on campus.”

Whipple said that students can get involved by signing the
petition and writing letters to Abbott as well. While she’s happy to see
students rallying around Reed, Whipple said this issue goes far beyond his case
and that she hopes to see systemic changes come from not only Reed’s case, but
others like it.

“Our criminal justice system operates by taking your worst
thing and making your life hell for it and I really hope that we can start
looking at that at a more systemic level,” she said. “I want us to reconsider
the criminal justice system and what it means to have justice in America. Part
of that is rallying around individual cases. Part of that is taking a step back
and thinking about what it means to be a just society.”