November 18, 2019 - Issue: Vol. 165, No. 184 — Daily Edition116th Congress (2019 - 2020) - 1st Session

[Page H8942]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    JUSTICE MUST BE RENDERED FOR ALL

  (Ms. JACKSON LEE asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Speaker, 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.

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