JOUR 4250 Blog Post 10
Earlier today (November 27), I was working on a group project for class, and the specific part of my assignment was to watch a video from an online news source and do a short write-up on what I saw in the video. I watched a daily show from November 6 by Democracy Now!, which is a non-profit news organization. Their show consisted of some voiceover stories on international news in countries like Mexico, Brazil, Israel, and China. They also talked about two other stories in detail, which were about nationwide gubernatorial elections, and about Rodney Reed. I mainly want to focus on the story of Reed since that was the story that they talked about the most during the hour-long show.
To provide some background information, in 1996, in Bastrop County, Texas, Rodney Reed was accused of raping and killing 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Reed is African-American, and Stites was White. An all-White jury sentenced him to death. His scheduled execution date was back on the 20th of this month, but he was granted an indefinite stay of execution, meaning his execution was stopped. The reason why the state of Texas granted him this stay of execution is because White former police officer Jimmy Fennell was engaged to Stites at the time, and Reed has been adamant in saying that he did not rape nor kill Stites. He, his family, and his supporters believe that Fennell killed her.
Democracy Now! interviewed Reed’s brother, Roderick, his sister-in-law, Uwana Akpan, and Bryce Benjet, a senior attorney from the Innocence Project. The project helps to free innocent people from prison. They were all talking about why they think Fennell killed Stites. Roderick says that Rodney was at his cousin’s place when she was killed. Benjet said that there are a lot of tendencies that Fennell has that potentially point to possibility of him being her killer. Both Roderick and Akpan are pushing for the criminal justice system to re-test DNA evidence to see if this case really is a cover-up to protect a former police officer from being convicted.
This is not the only case that involves a former police officer versus a black person in the criminal justice system. Amber Guyger was a former Dallas police officer who shot and killed African-American Botham Jean in his own apartment. She claims that she thought she was in her own apartment. The jury convicted her guilty of murder, and they sentenced her to 10 years in prison. This was a breakthrough victory for the Black community because police officers are usually not convicted when they are up against a Black person, especially if the officer is White, like Guyger. The Rodney Reed case will play a part in police accountability with the Black community just as much as the Guyger-Jean case did. If they find sufficient evidence that shows that Fennell killed Stites and not Reed, will he be convicted of murder, too?
