The Forensic Race For Reed

been updates in the case of Rodney Reid. Can you tell us a little bit about what's currently happening over in America.

and just like Kevin, and all white jury found him guilty. Now, it took the police quite a while to piece that case together and to be able to point the finger at Rodney because there was just no evidence. And although Rodney was in a relationship with Stacy, she was actually engaged to a local white police officer. And as we've mentioned, before ten years after her death, that police officer was

found guilty of rape and kidnap. So this was a dangerous individual and he was the first person placed under suspicion, and too we've always believed committed the crime. And I will get back to that a little bit more later on. So twenty years later, Rodney is still in prison on death row in Texas, and last week he was able to have a new hearing. Now it's not a new trial,

it's not even an appeal. It's actually a hearing that was sent back to the original court, the Basop County Court where his first trial took place, and he was found guilty despite there being no evidence by that or white jury. And this new hearing is about working out

where Stacy Stites, as then fiance, was that night. The reason this is taking place is because at the time of the trial and on the stand, the police officer her fiance, claimed he was with Stacy that whole night and she must have been murdered on her way to work the next morning, and a few of his friends

who were also police officers, gave the same testimony. But then just recently a few years ago, in an interview on CNN, one of his colleagues, who also was an investigator on the case, said that the fiance wasn't with Stacy that night. He was actually at a bar with him drinking, and so he then said that he went home around eleven o'clock, meaning it's not possible to say

that she couldn't have been killed during the night. His claim the fiancee was she had to have been killed in the morning on her way to work because she was with him all that night. So this hearing was purely to determine what the truth was. Was the this investigator who had previously said that the fiancee was at home all night telling the truth or was what he really said on CNN in the interview that he was

at a bar watching baseball with him the truth? And last week, in this new hearing, this investigator, a fellow police officer, admitted it was true. The fiance was at the bar, he was drinking heavily, he watched the baseball, and then he went home at around eleven o'clock, meaning that it was more than possible that Stacy Stites had been murdered sometime that evening. And that's some of the

forensic detail I'll get too later as well. But what this opened up is a new opportunity for Rodney that clearly perjury had been committed on the stand, and that eyewitness, that being Stacy's fiance, who was the one that was staying Stacy couldn't have been killed overnight, was lying.

The reason that Rodney was not able to be granted a new appeal and has only been granted this hearing back at the original county court is because at the start of the year and previously, this judge has also made rulings against Rodney. They said that there wasn't enough evidence for an appeal for Rodney. And why is there a problem with this judge, Well, because she's a Republican and so is her father, and her father was the

original judge at Rodney's original trial. So if she sent this to appeal, and Rodney was proven innocent, as we believe he is, it would show that her own father, a judge, had made some serious mistakes at the original trial that, again we also believe to be true. Now, this is something that should never have happened. She should have recused herself. She shouldn't be sitting in judgment of her own father previous rulings. But that's not the worst

of it. So not only has Rodney faced that, but this most current judge, who was sitting just last week in this new hearing for Rodney, is a judge that is quite well known in America because he sat on a hearing involving another death row inmate. And that death row inmate he was defended by a public defender, a seventy two year old alcoholic lawyer who urinated himself and fell asleep during the trial. Now, how on earth could he properly defend a man when he was clearly drunk

and asleep. When this was brought to the judge's attention, this lawyer said that he was bored by the trial. Remembering this man, another black man, was on trial for his life, and the judge ruled that that was acceptable and that this man was receiving a proper and fair defense. This is the judge that is now ruling in Rodney's case. So, as you can see, Rodney has had a rough run

with judges. He's had a father and daughter team working against him, and he's had a judge who thinks that a person who is drunk, asleep and can't even control their bladder is somehow effective counsel in a capital murder case. This is what nightmares are made of. And to think that this doesn't happen. Rodney Reid's case proves that it does. And you have to remember, despite there being no evidence, he's sat on death row for more than twenty years and he's come within hours of being executed.

issue of forensics and forensics and race. In both Kevin and Rodney's cases, the forensics never pointed to either Kevin or Rodney, and yet they were found guilty. Neither Rodney nor Kevin's DNA was linked to a murder. Both Rodney and Kevin were found guilty of rape, but neither woman had been raped. In fact, neither woman showed any sign

of having sexual intercourse. You also have to remember no witnesses ever said that this had taken place, and there weren't any of the forensic markers you would look for, so immediately there is a problem. And one thing I want to say about this is that this is very very common in cases where where a black man is facing a murder charge, and that is that a rape charge is often added. Now why is it added despite in these two cases there being absolutely no evidence that

sexual intercourse took place, let alone a rape. My take is this, it's because it makes the individual look worse to the jury. It makes them look like they're more of a monster. It means that, despite the prosecution's case clearly being very weak, it gives them a great deal more mud they can throw at both Kevin and Rodney and any individual facing a rape charge despite there being

no evidence. It means that when they address the jury in both the opening and closing of the trial, they can talk about the defendant having raped the women that had died, and obviously this makes the man, the black man, look much worse. And we also have to remember that these were both in Rodney's case and Kevin's case or white juries. We have to remember that Kevin's case took place in the early nineties in rural Queensland and Rodney's case took place at the same time in rural Texas.

These places are known for their racism. These places are known for that fear of black men roaming the streets. So if you can throw this mud at these two men despite there being absolutely no evidence of them even being there, let alone sexual intercourse or rape having taken place. Then I think it's part of what helps convict innocent men.

Now if we go further into the forensics. As I said earlier, it was possible for Stacey Stites to have died earlier in the night because clearly her fiance, the police officer now in jail for kidnap and rape, lied on the stand. And so in Rodney's case, a new forensic pathologist has been brought on board, just as we've done with Kevin's case. But in Rodney's case, this is no ordinary forensic pathologist. His name is Michael Baden. He's

perhaps the most famous forensic pathologist on earth. He's eighty three years old and has more experience than any other pathologist I'm aware of. He worked on the trial of OJ Simpson. He was brought in by a United States select committee to investigate the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. He's performed the autopsies on many famous people right around the world, from royalty to government officials to famous people like the actor John Belushi and possibly most importantly,

he worked on the case of Medgar Evers. Medgar Evers was a civil rights leader in the South in the sixties in the United States, and he was shot in the back by a klansman. He was coming home to his young family and his wife and he was murdered by that clansman in his driveway. Now, despite so much evidence pointing to this clansman's guilt, an all white jury

found him not guilty. But Michael Baden, the forensic pathologist now working for Rodney Reid, helped pursue the case for thirty years and he developed the forensic techniques to prove beyond any possible doubt that this klansman had murdered the famous Medgar Evers, the great civil rights leader, and the klansman was finally found guilty more than thirty years later. So Michael Baden has now looked at the forensics of Rodney's case, and imagine this. He's proven that Stacy Stites

did die long before she went to work. She died roughly thirty minutes after her fiance, the policeman, came home drunk from watching the baseball. He proved this using techniques that look at both rigor mortis, that is the stiffening and then relaxing of the muscles post death, and also what's known as lividity, and that's the way the blood

flows and pulls in the body after death. And it helps to show any marks on the body where someone may have been dragged, manhandled, maybe they'd been put into a car boot. And in Rodney's case, what the lividity shows is something we'd long suspected that the fiancee had put Stacy Stynes in the footwell of his car, and the lividity, the pulling of the blood. These tests show the way her body was contorted to fit in a footwell, exactly the shape and size of the small truck that

this police officer the fiance owned. Now here's another thing. That investigator that was there that night, who perjured himself and originally said that the fiance was at home, he helped the fiance get that truck back the next day. It was sold the day of Stacy Stites's death to a wrecker and was crushed, so no evidence was able to be collected. And as we've also previously spoken about, the police never went into Stacy Stites's home and looked to see if she'd been killed in her own home

where she was living with this fiancee who came home drunk. Clearly, that's what the timeline now shows, and it further shows Rodney couldn't have committed the crime. Why because that time of death, Rodney was miles and miles away from the location,

more than one hundred and twenty miles. So, in both Kevin's case and Rodney's case, not only do we have forensic evidence that shows at the very beginning that was conducted very early on in the case by the police, that they didn't commit this crime, the new evidence we've got in both Rodney's case and Kevin's case not only confirms that it helps further prove their innocence and show that their alibis match, and that it was not just unlikely,

but impossible for Kevin and Rodney to have committed these crimes because they were nowhere near where these crimes took place at the time the crimes took place, and the murders didn't take place the way the police said they did. It's what the original forensic showed. And so why does this happen? Well, my opinion is this the police picked their man for a murder very early on. With both Kevin and Rodney, they were selected early because they were

black men who were known to the victim. In Kevin's case, he barely knew Linda, he'd only met her once or twice. But as soon as they were picked up, the forensic pathologists working on these cases, whose work has now been completely discredited, tried to link the death in some way that would least help the police show that Kevin and

Rodney were involved. They failed to do that. They tried their best to show that Linda had been put in on the Tanuba house side of the river when she hadn't, And in Rodney's case, they tried to show that Stacy Styez died in the morning on her way to work when she hadn't. And they did this to frame both Kevin and Rodney, and the new forensics, done with modern technology by independent people who were some of the best forensic pathologists in the world, clear Kevin and Rodney of

any involvement. Why is it that two black men with absolutely no forensic connection to these cases have to wait a quarter of a century for the truth to come out. Why is it when the forensics are done when these women die, that it's done so appallingly. Don't the women Stacy and Linda deserve justice? Shouldn't every effort have been made to find out who really killed them, who committed these crimes, because we know Rodney and Kevin didn't do it,

which means the real killers have been walking the streets well. Thankfully, in Rodney's case, the man we believe committed the crime her fiance, a police officer, ten years later, was finally caught. That's the good news. The bad news is it took him raping another woman and kidnapping another woman to be caught. This time. They couldn't throw the book at Rodney because Rodney was in prison for a crime they'd long since

fitted him up. But despite this, Rodney is still in jail and the state of Texas is still trying to execute him. But what we're hoping is now that this new evidence has come forward that the investigator who originally lied has admitted no, the fiance was drinking and went home drunk after watching the baseball and the new forensic evidence showing that Stacy was killed not long after he would have arrived home and would have been placed in the footwell of his small track that this will finally

allow for the release of Rodney. And in Kevin's case, this new forensic evidence just adds to all of the evidence that shows Kevin's absolute innocence, But it continues to remain a problem, a huge problem. Here we have two black men who have lost their lives to the prison system, nearly fifty years in total between the two because the forensics was done so appallingly, two women whose families have not known the truth, two women whose families have never

believed the police got the right person. What does that tell you? When Linda's family has never believed that the right man was caught, do they get justice? Does Linda get justice? And why is Kevin? And why is Linda's family paying for what the police and sloppy forensic work is doing. But you might think this only happens in America. We see a lot about black lives matter in America, and we see a lot on TV about death row

cases and exonerations. But this is happening in Australia too, and it's about to be exposed.

qualifications at the time, and so that appeal will be going on on Monday. So watch out for that appeal because if Derek Bromley is exonerated next week, he'll be the longest serving exonerated prisoner in Australia's history. That was episode forty two of Curtain