I am running the 2023 NYC Marathon on Sunday, November 5th in support of Innocence Project client Rodney Reed, who has been incarcerated on Texas's death row for over 25 years for a crime he did not commit. Mr. Reed, who is Black, was sentenced to death in 1998 by an all-white jury for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites, a white woman with whom he was in a relationship. Overwhelming evidence points to the guilt of Stites' ex-husband, a police officer who later confessed to her murder. The prosecution also illegally withheld evidence favorable to Mr. Reed's defense for over two decades. Despite this and other compelling evidence of his innocence, Mr. Reed remains in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day in Texas's notorious Polunsky prison.
It has been a privilege getting to know Mr. Reed and his family in the last year and a half I have spent working on his legal team. Per his request, I will be running in a FREE RODNEY REED shirt in hopes of amplifying his story. And I'll be running with two colleagues, Director of Special Litigation Vanessa Potkin and paralegal Brenda Cachay Gutiérrez - you can learn more about their reasons for running here.
If you have the means, I'd be most grateful for your support of the Innocence Project's work to remedy and prevent wrongful convictions. Thank you so much for your consideration.
Pictured above with Sandra Reed, Mr. Reed's mother, in October 2022.
