From [HERE] Even if death-row inmate Rodney Reed, a black man sentenced in a racially charged trial, is exonerated, he will still have lost at least 19 years of his life. (In photo, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.)

Speaking to Al Jazeera from the Allen B. Polunsky Unit, or "death row," in Texas, Reed said he believes he is a victim of systemic racism, in which the U.S. criminal justice system rushes the “half-cocked” trial and execution of innocents.

Texas was set to execute Reed on Thursday, a day after his interview with Al Jazeera. But after nearly two decades in prison and four attempts to appeal, the state’s Court of Criminal Appeals on Feb. 23 stayed his execution, citing new evidence potentially exonerating him that his attorneys brought to authorities’ attention over a year ago.

Fair trial from a jury of racist suspects? 

Reed, a 47-year-old from Bastrop is on death row for the 1996 abduction, rape and murder of Stacey Stites, a 19-year-old white woman. His attorneys with nonprofit advocacy group the Innocence Project requested that his case be heard again this last time amid developments that the lawyers say strongly suggest he is innocent.

Among those developments is that the forensic investigator in Reed’s original trial now says Reed’s semen, found on Stites’ body — previously a linchpin in the case against him — was likely from a consensual sexual encounter well before her death. 

Stites’ fiancé at the time of her death, Jimmy Fennell, a white police officer, was a suspect in her death until Reed’s conviction, according to Innocence Project attorney Bryce Benjet and local news reports. In 2008, Fennell was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the abduction and rape of a young woman while on duty, The Austin Chronicle reported.