Short Circuit 376 | Murder Mysteries

Two federal appellate opinions involving a murder and whether justice was served. First, IJ’s Dan Alban reports on a Sixth Circuit case where a man alleges he was wrongfully accused and spent seven years in jail waiting for trials on various false charges, including not just murder but others too—including sodomy—and where the trials never happened. All of this, the man claims, was because of a conspiracy directed toward getting him to testify—and lie—in another case. It’s a crazy story that the court doesn’t want to hear because it concluded the man’s civil rights lawsuit was filed too late. Then we hear from An Altik of IJ about the latest in the very long running saga of a man, Rodney Reed, trying to prove his innocence while on death row. Reed was successful at the Supreme Court last year in his attempt to have a claim for DNA testing to be heard. But now that the Fifth Circuit has considered the claim it has denied relief. The court declared that the underlying rule used in Texas courts is constitutional under the Due Process Clause.

Click here for transcript.

Reed v. Goertz

Brown v. Louisville-Jefferson County

Background on Rodney Reed case

The Murder on the Links