On the recordNovember 18, 2019
I want to congratulate a collective group of Republicans and Democrats, people from the faith community who joined together to acknowledge that Rodney Reed, an inmate on death row for more than 20 years, with new DNA evidence and witnesses who indicated that another individual, the fiance of the victim, may have committed this crime, was given the opportunity for an indefinite suspension by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. It is important, as Texas probably remains one of the States with the largest number of individuals on death row, that we do not take the victim's interests lightly or that of the perpetrator and convicted person. Mr. Reed did not and was not convicted by a jury of his peers. The jury was not diverse in Giddings, Texas. There was subsequent evidence, as I indicated, DNA evidence, as I have indicated. It is important as much for the justice for the victim to know, or the victim's family to know, the actual perpetrator who did this dastardly act and took a life as it is for the man sitting on death row. So religious community leaders, international leaders, my colleague in the United States Senate Senator Cruz, I, and others around the State want to recognize the work of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, after the fact, and, of course, the Board of Pardons. Justice must be rendered for all, and that is what is happening in Texas today. ____________________
