Amanda Seales got the attention of transracial fraud Shaun King when she gave her opinion about convicted murderer Rodney Reed.
In a 9-minute Instagram live video, Seales said she didn’t believe convicted rapist Rodney Reed was entirely innocent.
Seales, a 38-year-old comedienne, is best known for performing as part of the duo Floetry. She noted Reed’s troublesome habit of leaving his DNA inside multiple rape victims.
“It’s very duplicitous, not just his family, but persons who fancy themselves activists, were doing so with the knowledge that this person, Rodney Reed, is not just accused of but has been linked to previous rapes via his DNA being discovered within the victim,” Seales said.
But King, a Caucasian man who claims to be Black, “fact checked” Seales on social media.
“On behalf of the family of Rodney Reed, I have to respond here directly to @AmandaSeales,” King wrote.
“We’ve counted over 20 egregious factual errors in her viral video, but NONE were more inflammatory and damaging than this one.
“Here, she says that Rodney Reed, who she fails to say was a high school student at the time, in Wichita Falls, Texas, raped and killed a woman there. LIES. ALL LIES. I am proud to report that only Amanda, in her rush to get a video out, killed that woman. She is thankfully still alive and well today. She was not murdered by Rodney or anyone else. And a jury voted quickly and unanimously to acquit Rodney on all charges in that case.”
He added:
“Do you really think Rodney Reed duped The Innocence Project for the 18 years they’ve been on this case?
Do you think he duped the conservative Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals?
BE SMART, people.
They saw the actual evidence.
WAKE UP!!”
In a second video, Seales apologized for her error, but she doubled down on her belief that Reed is not innocent because of his history of sexual assaults in Texas – beginning when he was in high school.
In 1997, Reed was charged with aggravated sexual assault and capital murder in the April 23, 1996 murder of Stacey Stites.
Stites, 21, was on her way to work at a grocery store on the morning of April 23, when she was murdered and her body dumped on the side of the road in Bastrop, Texas.
According to police, Stites had been beaten, sodomized, and strangled with her own belt in the hours before she died.
Police believe she was attacked in her fiancé’s pickup truck, which she drove to work that morning. The truck was discovered abandoned at Bastrop High School at 5:30 a.m.
DNA found in and on Stites was matched to Rodney Reed – who claimed he didn’t know Stites. Reed’s DNA was in the system from a separate rape investigation.
After investigators told Reed his DNA was linked to saliva on the victim’s chest and sperm cells found in the victim’s vaginal cavity, he changed his story and claimed he had a consensual sexual relationship with Stites.
Investigators tested the DNA of 15 men, but only Reed’s DNA matched the saliva and the sperm found inside the victim.
Reed claimed he lied about knowing the victim because she was “a dead white girl” who dated a cop in the south.
During Reed’s trial, his defense attorneys were unable to present any evidence that he knew the victim prior to her murder.
He didn’t know her phone number or where she lived. And no witnesses were called who could place them together at the same time in the days or weeks prior to her murder.
Reed’s defense was unable to explain how his saliva was found on the victim’s chest if they had consensual sex 24 hours earlier. Most people take a bath or a shower before going to work.
Reed’s defense claimed Stites was murdered by her fiancé, a former cop who was later arrested and charged with a separate rape.
An all-white jury found Reed guilty on multiple charges of raping and murdering Stites, and he was sentenced to death.
Seales is not the only person who is confident that Reed is not an innocent victim, due to his troubled history of depositing his DNA in previous rape victims.
Legal analysts say the appeals board was correct to delay Reed’s execution for 120 days, but Reed is far from an innocent victim.
The appeals court denied Reed’s attorneys’ request to reduce his death sentence to life in prison – an indication that his own attorneys know Reed will not be acquitted of rape and murder if he is granted a new trial.
