John Seasly

Thirteen Texas law enforcement officers joined a growing call to halt the scheduled execution November 20 of Rodney Reed, noting “serious doubts” about his guilt in a 1996 murder.

Two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency investigators were on their way to dinner in October, 1988, when a man armed with a handgun suddenly emerged from between cars parked in a Houston lot and robbed them.

In January, 1982, a Greenwood, South Carolina resident was found dead in her bedroom closet by her neighbor, Jimmy Holloway.

Responding to Darlie Lynn Routier’s frantic 911 call from her Dallas County home in 1996, police found her two sons, Devon Routier, 6, and Damon Routier, 5, dying of stab wounds.

A Texas state senator has asked the governor to stay a Nov. 20 execution, after attorneys for a condemned man on Monday filed a motion raising new potential witnesses whose accounts cast doubt on their client’s guilt.

Attorneys for Rodney Reed, a Texas inmate slated for execution next month, have asked Governor Greg Abbott for a 30-day reprieve from execution citing new evidence and “grave doubt concerning his guilt.”

This is the first in a series of cases that Injustice Watch is featuring over coming weeks called “Unrequired Innocence.” Each of the cases involves defendants given death sentences who have not been exonerated, despite significant evidence that emerged casting doubt on their guilt. The case of Larry Swearingen represents the only one of these cases in which the defendant has been executed.

Eighteen days before Stacey Lee Stites was supposed to be married to a rookie police officer, her body was found in April, 1996 by a passerby in the brush on the side of a road in a rural county not far from Austin.

This is the third in a series of cases that Injustice Watch is featuring over coming weeks called “Unrequired Innocence.” Each of the cases involves defendants given death sentences who have not been exonerated, despite significant evidence that emerged casting doubt on their guilt. Thomas Ward and Karl Fontenot have not been exonerated despite evidence that their “dream confessions” are proven fiction.

In their new study, Injustice Watch co-founder Rob Warden and reporter John Seasly have identified a troubling category of cases: Defendants sentenced to die who have not been exonerated despite significant evidence of their innocence.