HOUSTON – Texas death row inmate Rodney Reed lost another appeal before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which on Wednesday rejected his claims that new evidence pointed to another man as the killer of a 19-year-old woman in Bastrop County 13 years ago.

In a sixth petition to the state's highest criminal appeals court, Reed's lawyers argued they had evidence suggesting the boyfriend of Stacey Stites was the person who abducted, raped and murdered her.

Stites' fiance, Jimmy Fennell, is a former police officer who later was jailed for abducting and having improper sexual activity with a woman in his custody.

The court, however, said the information submitted by Reed failed to show innocence and failed to show that prosecutors withheld it.

Reed, 41, has insisted he and Stites had a continuing secret affair even though Stites was engaged to soon marry Fennell when her body was found along a rural road after she failed to show up for work at a supermarket in Bastrop, southeast of Austin.

Reed is black and Stites was white, and Reed's lawyers have described the racial aspects of the case as explosive.

They also accused prosecutors of improperly withholding evidence. Prosecutors denied any wrongdoing and disputed the claims of a secret relationship between the victim and Reed.

Reed was arrested almost a year after the April 1996 slaying of Stites after his DNA surfaced in the investigation of an unrelated sexual assault case.

The court also turned down the appeal of a man whose death sentence for a murder in Smith County was thrown out by the court in 2005.

This time the court upheld the second death sentence for Gregory Russeau, 39, convicted of killing a 75-year-old auto mechanic during a robbery in Tyler.

The murdered man, James Syvertson, was found at his shop by his wife, daughter and grandchildren. His wallet and car were stolen. Russeau was arrested in Syvertson's car in Longview the day after the May 2001 murder. His palm print and hair were found at the auto shop. Russeau had a previous conviction for burglary.

The Associated Press