HOUSTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling refusing DNA testing of additional evidence in the lengthy case of a man condemned for the rape-slaying of a Central Texas woman.

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Attorneys for 50-year-old prisoner Rodney Reed sought the new testing on items investigators collected related to the 1996 abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Stacy Stites. Her body was found off the side of a road about 35 miles southeast of Austin.

The high court's refusal, without comment Monday, upholds the Texas court's April 2017 decision that also said Reed's lawyers were intending to "unreasonably delay" his execution.

Reed was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1998 despite numerous protests over two decades claiming his innocence. According to Reed, the 19-year-old victim, Stacey Stites’ fiancé, Jimmy Fennell, is guilty of the crime.

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Along with his attorneys, Reed argued that a new trial should be granted on the grounds of newly discovered evidence, citing a 2016 CNN interview that suggests a different timeline of Fennell's whereabouts on the night of the homicide.