WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from longtime Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed who has sought to test crime-scene evidence that he says will help clear him.
The justices left in place a ruling against Reed from the federal appeals court in New Orleans for the second time in less than three years.
The three liberal justices dissented.
Reed was sentenced to death for the 1996 killing of 19-year-old Stacey Stites. Prosecutors have refused to allow for DNA testing of the webbed belt that was used to strangle Stites as she made her way to work at a supermarket in Bastrop, a rural community about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Austin.
Prosecutors say Reed also raped Stites, but he contends that he was having a consensual affair with her.
Reed has long maintained that Stites’ fiance, former police officer Jimmy Fennell, was the real killer. Fennell was angry about the interracial affair, Reed says. Stites was white and Reed is Black. Fennell, who served time for sexual assault and was released from prison in 2018, has denied killing Stites.
“The killer held that belt tight against her throat for minutes, and must have left his sweat and skin cells—and thus his DNA—where he gripped the belt, both on the surface and deep within the webbing,” Reed's attorneys wrote.
State and lower federal courts have so far backed prosecutors' refusal to allow for the testing, which would be paid for by Reed's defense team.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that it is “inexplicable” why prosecutors wouldn't allow the belt to be tested, “despite the very substantial possibility that such testing would exculpate Reed and identify the real killer.”
With the high court's refusal to step in, “the State will likely execute Reed without the world ever knowing whether Reed's or Fennell's DNA is on the murder weapon,” Sotomayor wrote in an opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The state's top criminal appeals court ruled that the Texas law on DNA testing doesn't apply to items that may have been contaminated. But the state routinely uses contaminated evidence in prosecutions, Reed's lawyers wrote, and in any event, the state, not Reed, was responsible for the handling of the evidence.
In 2023, the justices ruled 6-3 to send Reed’s case back to a lower court for his constitutional challenge to the state’s law on DNA testing.
The issue before the high court then was whether Reed, sentenced to death more than 25 years ago, waited too long to file his lawsuit claiming that untested crime-scene evidence would exonerate him. Texas courts and the federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that he missed the deadline.
Reed’s efforts to stop his execution have received support from such celebrities as Beyoncé, Kim Kardashian and Oprah Winfrey.
FILE - The Supreme Court is photographed, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)
ATLANTA (AP) — Federal immigration officers have been seen at an airport in Atlanta after President Donald Trump said he’d deploy them to supplement the Transportation Security Administration during a government shutdown that has caused long lines at security checkpoints across the country.
On Monday morning, a handful of federal officers were seen by The Associated Press near busy lines at Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport.
Federal officers are a routine presence at international airports, where Customs and Border Protection officers screen arriving travelers and Homeland Security Investigations agents handle criminal cases tied to smuggling, trafficking and fraud. But what’s unusual in the current moment is their visibility at TSA security checkpoints.
Atlanta’s Hartsfield–Jackson isn’t the only airport where travelers are set to see more immigration officers going forward. On Sunday, the Trump administration signaled that agents would be deployed to large airports with the longest wait times — and Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis said that would include “hundreds” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, but she did not disclose all the airports they would go to, citing security reasons.
Hundreds of thousands of Homeland Security workers, including from the TSA, U.S. Secret Service and Coast Guard, have worked without pay since Congress failed to renew DHS funding last month. That’s led many TSA agents to call in sick — or even quit their jobs — as financial strains pile up. Meanwhile, the staffing shortages have forced some airports to close checkpoints at times, with wait times swinging dramatically for travelers.
Some fear the move to deploy federal immigration agents will only escalate tensions.
Trump said Sunday that he would order federal immigration agents to airports to assist TSA by guarding exit lanes or checking passenger IDs unless Democrats agreed to fund the DHS. Funding for the department lapsed Feb. 14, as Democrats refused to fund ICE as well as Customs and Border Protection without changes to their operations in the wake of the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Democrats are continuing to demand major changes to federal immigration operations — including policy changes that would require ICE officers to get a warrant from a judge before forcefully entering homes, the removal of masks and clear identifying information on uniforms.
Trump on Monday directed ICE officers not to wear face coverings in their work at airports. In a social media posted, Trump said he supports ICE officers wearing masks when dealing with “hardened criminals” but suggested it isn’t necessary “when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports.”
Beyond TSA operations, New York’s LaGuardia Airport shut down following a deadly collision on the runway late Sunday. An Air Canada regional jet struck a fire truck while landing, officials said — killing the pilot and copilot while around 40 passengers and crew members were taken to area hospitals, some with serious injuries.
According to the FAA, LaGuardia is expected to remain closed until at least 2 p.m. ET on Monday. Air traffic has been diverted, and Monday morning operations also were halted at Newark Liberty International Airport in neighboring New Jersey.
Grantham-Philips reported from New York. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley in Washington contributed to this report.
People wait in long TSA security lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Federal immigration agents walk through Terminal 8 at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
People wait in long TSA security lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Federal immigration agents are seen at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
People wait in long TSA security lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)
Federal immigration agents are seen at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
A federal immigration agent is seen as people wait in a TSA line at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Monday, March 23, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
