Also in today's Austin American-Statesman, "Attorney files to submit more evidence in death row case."
The attorney for death row inmate Rodney Reed filed a motion Wednesday asking an appeals court for a new trial because of what he cited as new evidence against a former suspect in the murder of Stacey Stites.
Bryce Benjet, Reed's attorney, said the new evidence about Jimmy Fennell Jr., Stites' fiancé at the time, includes what Benjet said was Fennell's personal Web site that contains sexual content and violent images.
Reed is on death row for the 1996 strangling of 19-year-old Stites in Bastrop County, but Reed's attorney says Fennell, then a Giddings police officer, should have been investigated more thoroughly as a suspect.
Benjet said other recent evidence includes a woman's allegations that Fennell acted improperly as a Georgetown police officer when he pulled her over and Fennell's admitting in May to kidnapping and having sex with a woman in custody in October.
Fennell resigned from the department in January and is awaiting trial in the kidnapping incident.
"I think it confirms everything about Jimmy Fennell's character that we've said from the beginning," Benjet said. "If the jury knew everything that we know now, I'm confident that a jury would never have convicted Reed."
Earlier coverage is here.
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