It was standing room only in a Bastrop courtroom Thursday for a hearing in the Rodney Reed case.
Friends and family of Rodney Reed waited to hear testimony in what could be his last chance to get off Texas' death row.
"We've been praying for this day and we hope the judge allows this evidence to prove my brother didn't do this," Reed's brother Rodrick Reed said.
Prosecutors at the time of his trial in 1998 withheld knowledge of a witness whose testimony would have been crucial to his defense, Reed's attorneys said.
State District Judge Reva Towslee Corbett heard from that witness Thursday.
Martha Barnett said she saw Stacy Stites the morning of her murder with Stites' fiance, Jimmy Fennell. Her testimony contradicts some of the information attorneys were working with when Reed was convicted in 1998.
Prosecutors argued Thursday that the Bastrop County District Attorney's Office didn't know about what Barnett saw. They suggested she was not a credible witness because she waited two years to come forward with her story.
Reed's supporters said Barnett has no vested interest in the case.
"We don't know her, never met her... Why would she come out of the blue and say this? There's no logic in it other than just telling the truth," Rodrick Reed said.
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Reed hearing
Allie Rasmus reports on Thursday's hearing in Bastrop.
 
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The judge won't decide if Barnett is credible but instead whether prosecutors failed to let the defense know about her.
"If you have the facts, you have the facts. And if you don't, you don't. It doesn't make any sense to me to hide the ball and blow off exculpatory information because you have some concerns about it as a prosecutor," Reed's attorney Morris Overstreet said.
Overstreet said whether Barnett was credible or not is beside the point.
"They're simply supposed to turn over the information and they failed to do that," Overstreet said.
At the end of what is expected to be a two-day hearing, the judge will send her recommendation to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
She could recommend the case be revisited or that Reed's conviction stands and he remain on death row.
The hearing resumes Friday morning. The judge will hear from three other witnesses who may have also had additional information that was not disclosed to defense attorneys at the time of Reed's capital murder trial.
