US politicians, celebrities and members of the public joined forces today in a bid to save an apparently innocent black man from death row.

More than a dozen Republicans wrote to Texas Governor Greg Abbott to say that getting it wrong with Rodney Reed could “erode public trust — not only in capital punishment, but in Texas justice itself.”

Mr Reed says he was wrongfully convicted by an all-white jury of raping and strangling 19-year-old Stacy Stites nearly 30 years ago.