In a sworn affidavit submitted Wednesday evening on behalf of death row inmate Rodney Reed, a former prison inmate claims another man bragged about committing the murder that sent Reed to death row 21 years ago.

According to the affidavit, that man was Jimmy Fennell, the fiance of murder victim Stacey Stites. At the time of the prison yard conversation earlier this decade, Fennell was serving a 10-year sentence for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a woman in his custody as a Georgetown police officer in 2007.

"He was talking about his fiance with a lot of hatred and anger," said the three-page affidavit by Arthur Snow Jr., who was serving a term for forgery. "Jimmy said his fiance had been sleeping around with a black man behind his back."

Fennell proudly added that he killed the woman in response, Snow said.

Snow was the fourth new witness produced by defense lawyers in recent weeks as they scramble to block Reed’s Nov. 20 execution date.

Defense lawyers argue that Reed, who is African American, is innocent, that his semen was discovered inside Stites’ body because they were having a secret affair, and that Fennell was the most likely suspect in the 19-year-old woman’s death after learning of Reed and Stites’ relationship.

Fennell, through his lawyer Robert Phillips, has long denied playing a role in Stites’ death and has criticized Reed’s lawyers for "the panoply of witnesses that keep coming out of the woodwork 20 years after the fact."

Fennell loved Stites and was devastated by her death, Phillips has said, adding that the "creativity and desperation" of Reed’s lawyers cannot change that fact.

Prosecutors have also criticized Reed’s defense team for filing numerous appeals that they say appear designed to muddle the case and delay his punishment.

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Snow’s affidavit was included in a clemency petition Reed’s lawyers filed Wednesday asking the Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend that Gov. Greg Abbott commute Reed’s sentence to life in prison "in light of the grave doubt concerning his guilt."

The petition also requested a reprieve of at least 120 days on Reed’s death sentence so new evidence, including Snow’s affidavit and leading forensic experts who support Reed’s innocence claim, can be fully investigated.

Also Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Reed's request to halt his planned execution. Reed still has a similar request pending at the U.S. Supreme Court as well as a federal court lawsuit seeking to force DNA testing on Stites’ woven belt, which was used as the murder weapon, and other crime scene evidence that has never been tested.

In his affidavit, Snow said he was a leader in the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, at the Stevenson Unit in Cuero when Fennell, who is white, approached him around 2010.

According to Snow, Fennell sought protection from black and Hispanic inmates and agreed to pay the Aryan Brotherhood for that help out of his commissary fund. That agreement lasted until inmates learned that Fennell was a former police officer serving a rape conviction, "and the Aryan Brotherhood couldn’t protect Jimmy anymore," he said.

Snow said he was transferred to the Connally Unit, where known prison gang members are housed, after Fennell accused the Aryan Brotherhood of extortion.

The conversation with Fennell occurred before the protection agreement fell apart, said Snow, who speculated in the affidavit that Fennell "assumed that his confession would impress me and earn him credibility with the Aryan Brotherhood."

Snow said he recently abandoned some of his prejudices and the "prison mentality" against snitches, allowing him to come forward with the information.

Other recently produced defense witnesses included an acquaintance who said Fennell threatened to kill Stites if he ever caught her "messing around on me" and a former Lee County sheriff’s deputy who said he attended Stites’ funeral and recalled Fennell standing over her coffin and saying "something along the lines of, ‘You got what you deserved.’"

A third affidavit came from a former Bastrop County deputy who said Fennell confided before Stites’ death that he believed she was having an affair with a black man.