The Supreme Court’s 6–3 opinion inReed v. Goertz clocks in at only six pages, but it doesa lotin that space. Rodney Reed, who is on Texas death row, sought DNA testing in state court to prove his innocence. He lost and eventually filed a federal lawsuit, based on due process, challenging the state-court orders. Reed’s due process claim was subject to a two-year statute of limitations, and the question for the justices was when that limitations periodbegan. If it started when the Texas trial court denied testing, then the federal lawsuit couldn’t proceed, as it would have been filed too late. But if it started when the state’shighest criminal court denied testing, then the federal lawsuit was timely and the federal judges must decide the case on the merits. In an opinion by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was joined by the three liberals plus Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court held that the lawsuit could proceed as timely.

Without context, the issue inReedmight look small.Reed, however,is more than a case about when the statute of limitations period for a DNA-access claim begins. In fact, it operates on three distinct planes of legal discourse. First, the Supreme Court decision is a pivotal moment in Rodney Reed’s litigation, which is now thehighest-profile American case in which a death-sentenced prisoner asserts his innocence. Second, the opinion avoids what can only be described as a federalism trainwreck—a rule that would have required state prisoners seeking DNA access to sue in federal court while awaiting the resolution of their state litigation. Third, the ruling seems to signal that even this version of the Supreme Court is not entirely blind to the risk of wrongful convictions, nor to the role the federal judiciary might play in exoneration.

To understand these things, readers should have some sense of Reed’s underlying innocence claim. And on that score, the public owes a debt of gratitude to Intercept reporterJordan Smith, whohascoveredthiscase for almost 22 years. (Readers should be advised that the following contains descriptions of sexual assault.)

Reed, who is Black, seeks to overturn a 1998 conviction for the 1996 rape and murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, who was white. Stites had been strangled with a belt outside of Bastrop, Texas. Investigators initially suspected Stites’ husband, police officer Jimmy Fennell. Their focus shifted to Reed, however, when they matched his DNA to three spermatozoa found in Stites’ vaginal cavity. Even though Reed and Stites were having an affair, Reed initially denied knowing her. This was rural Texas; Reed was Black, Stites was white, her husband was a cop, and she was dead.

Law enforcement prosecuted the case as a stranger attack. Specifically, it alleged that Stites left for work at about 3 a.m. in Fennell’s truck. (The truck was found at Bastrop High School at about 5:30 a.m.) The prosecution argued that Reed raped and strangled Stites with a belt after ambushing her on the street. The lawyers settled on a time of death just after 3 a.m. because Fennell, who said he was asleep, told police that Stites would have left for work around that time. The state’s experts testified that, given rates of sperm decay, Reed’s DNA had to be deposited around the theorized time of ambush. There was no other evidence that such an ambush took place.

It turns out that the case was based on junk forensic science. Nothing about the rate of sperm decay excluded the possibility that the sperm could have come from a consensual sexual encounter days before the murder. The idea that Stites’ injuries proved that she was raped when she was murdered fell apart under serious scientific scrutiny. Finally, skin discoloration that came from blood pooling after death (also known as lividity) indicated that Stites died long before 3 a.m.

And a massive tranche of new evidence points directly toward Fennell, Stites’ husband. He failed two polygraphs and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination thereafter. Fennell gave his best friend, another officer, a timeline of his whereabouts on the night of the murder that differed from the account he gave at trial. Multiple people who knew Stites have given sworn testimony that she was involved with Reed before she was murdered. Fennell’s law enforcement colleagues, moreover, said that Fennell knew about the affair and was furious about it. Fennell told one officer-friend that Stites had been ”fucking a n––––.” Another officer at Stites’ wake heard Fennell say that “she got what she deserved.” And another police employee who attended that wake heard Fennell say, “At least the b–––h got to wear the damn dress.” Fennell has a history of menacing behavior, too. The woman that Fennell dated after Stites’ death complained that Fennell stalked and harassed her after they broke up. Years after Stites’ murder, Fennell was sentenced to a decade in prison forraping a woman at gunpoint and threatening to kill her if she told anyone. Two people who did time with Fennell testified that, while incarcerated, he indicated that he strangled Stites with his belt.

So the first way to understand the Supreme Court’s decision is as a turning point in Reed’s capital litigation. The above-recited facts trickled into public view over time, and they form a harrowing tale of injustice. The group taking up Reed’s cause includesKim Kardashian,Meek Mill, Rihanna,LL Cool J, and Questlove. Dr. Philinterviewed Reed on death row and has sincelobbied for Texas to vacate his conviction. Those who continue to publicly defend Reed’s conviction rely primarily onhe’s-no-angel arguments typically used to underwrite bias about Black criminality.Reed does not ensure that Texas will have to perform DNA tests on evidence from the murder scene (including the belt), but it does reopen the door. And it’s easy to see how the testing could bring the case to conclusion—especially if it shows that Fennell’s DNA was on the belt.

Reedalso embraces a very practical vision of functioning federalism. The now-invalidatedFifth Circuit ruling would have started the statute of limitations on anyone’s DNA-access claims the momenta trial courtdenies testing. The logic embedded in that rule is strange enough—how could a federal court know whether a state’s process is holistically defective before the state process is complete? But even if one puts the conceptual problems aside, the Fifth Circuit decision would have produced disasters in DNA-access cases. It bears repeating that the opinion would require DNA-access claimants to sue in federal courtwhile their state litigation remains pending. This would be a nightmare. The Supreme Court puts it more gently: “That parallel litigation would run counter to core principles of federalism, comity, consistency, and judicial economy. We see no good reason for such senseless duplication.” It’s difficult to understand how the invalidated rule—which would deny state courts a chance to finish adjudicating constitutional claims—could coexist with the idea that state and federal judges are equally competent. (In the interest of full disclosure, I signed and helped draft anamicus brief making these points.)

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Finally,Reedcaptures, at least in part, the Supreme Court justices’ broader view about prisoners’ constitutional rights to DNA testing. And that view is not all that great for death-sentenced people claiming innocence.Reedobserves that federal claims for DNA access are “severely limit[ed]” and that there is “slim room” for successful litigation. But, on the other hand,Reeddoesn’t read like the work of a Supreme Court poised to snuff out the due process right entirely—and that should not be taken for granted. After all, there were jurisdictional grounds on which the court could have decided the case against Reed, and it could have invited the lower courts to reconsider the constitutional precedent. But it didn’t do those things. “Reeddidn’t extinguish the constitutional right” to due process might feel like small comfort, but anyone who follows the modern Supreme Court understands that, when the justices want to indulge their preferences on constitutional questions, theydon’t feel terribly constrained by precedent.