(LifeSiteNews) — The U.S. Justice Department (DoJ) withheld exculpatory evidence from Mark Reno, a pro-life Catholic man charged with shooting at a federal building in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Reno died in federal custody 28 days after his arrest for this alleged crime.
On July 18, 2022, the FBI arrested Mark Reno at his home in Jefferson City, Tennessee, and charged him with destroying government property, claiming that he shot three windows of the John J. Duncan Federal Building on July 3, 2022. No bullets, fragments, or casings were ever found.
Despite a due process order, mandating that the prosecutor (“The United States of America”) turn over all exculpatory evidence, the prosecution never disclosed to Reno, or the Court, a federal report dated June 18, 2022. This report, written by a security officer for the Duncan building, documented another broken window in the building. The officer thought that this window had been broken by road debris, loosened by nearby construction.
Reno’s detention hearing for the alleged shooting on July 3 was held on July 22, 2022. At this hearing, U.S. attorneys did not turn over the federal report about the window broken on June 18. Based on the evidence that was presented and the oral arguments, Judge Jill McCook decided that Reno should be detained until he could be tried.
However, Reno never made it to trial. He died in federal custody on August 15, 2022.
A few months later, the DoJ posthumously accused Reno of being the arsonist who set fire to Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood on December 31, 2021.
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How the withheld report came to light
The report which the DoJ withheld was made by an officer of the Federal Protective Service (FPS). The FPS is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security charged with guarding federal properties. I obtained this FPS report and others by requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The withheld report documented an incident in which a window was shattered on the John J. Duncan building on June 18, 2022. The reporting officer speculated that the damage might have been caused by debris loosened by nearby construction:
I did note the chipping of the curb and numerous small pieces of concrete on the street and sidewalk near the damaged window…The construction occurring across the street could also have been involved in the cracked window, but no direct evidence provided me with insight into how the window was damaged… I reviewed video footage from 0910 hours to 1040 hours, on the June 18, 2022 and was unable to identify the cause of the broken window from the footage (2022-06-18 FPS incident report, p. 3).
The FPS did not classify the June 18 event as a “shooting.”
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The DoJ was under a due process order
On the day of Reno’s arrest, the prosecutor (“The United States of America”) was given an explicit court order to turn over all exculpatory evidence to Mark Reno:
Pursuant to the Due Process Protections Act, the Court confirms the United States’ obligation to produce all exculpatory evidence to the defendant pursuant to Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) and its progeny, and orders it to do so. Failing to do so in a timely manner may result in consequences, including, but not limited to, exclusion of evidence, adverse jury instructions, dismissal of charges, contempt proceedings, or sanctions by the Court (2022-07-18 Reno Due Process Order).
This order refers to the Supreme Court’s decision, Brady v. Maryland (1963), which affirmed that it is a violation of due process for the prosecution in a criminal proceeding to withhold evidence favorable to an accused “irrespective of the good faith or bad faith of the prosecution.”
The withheld report had exculpatory value for Mark Reno
The FPS report and associated photograph from June 18 had exculpatory value for Mark Reno due to qualities in common with the July 3 damage of which he was accused:
- The fracture patterns were nearly identical.
- For all the windows—the one shattered on June 18 and the three shattered on July 3—only the outer windowpanes were damaged; the inner panes remained entirely intact.
- No one reported gunshots on either day.
- No one called the Knoxville Police Department to report a shooting for either incident.
- No bullets, bullet fragments, or casings were ever found for any of the broken windows.
Unusual driving patterns were also noted for both incidents. In her affidavit accusing Reno of the July 3 shooting, FBI Agent Jessi Mann described Reno’s driving near the Duncan Building:
Vehicle-1 decreased its speed briefly in the vicinity of the first damaged window in the IRS office… Vehicle-1 next accelerated and then immediately slowed to a brief stop in the vicinity of the second and third damaged windows in the lobby of the Federal Building (FBI affidavit, §19).
However, the author of the June 18 report indicated that nearby construction was causing disruption to drivers in general:
Construction is being completed directly across Locust Street and the street has been narrowed causing multiple vehicles to run along or upon the curb (2022-06-18 FPS incident report, p. 3).
The DoJ had the June 18 FPS report
Both the FBI and U.S. attorneys were in possession of the withheld June 18 report. The FPS report from July 3 documents the transfer of the June 18 report from the FPS to the FBI:
SA [redacted] also inquired to footage from the first damaged window incident on July 18, 2022…I provided a copy of PSO [redacted] statement from the first incident, but was unable to provide any video footage from June 18, 2022, as the cameral system appeared to have already wrote over the footage (2022-07-03 FPS incident report, p.6).
In the above excerpt, “SA” stands for “Special Agent,” referring to an FBI agent. Although the date in the first sentence is “July 18,” the author clearly meant “June 18.”
In a press release, the DoJ accused Reno of shooting at the Duncan building on June 18, 2022 although they had no evidence that he had been in the area. As noted above, all building-security footage from June 18 had been overwritten, and the FBI didn’t install tracking devices on Reno’s cars until June 19 (FBI affidavit, §28).
Reno was never charged with shooting at the Duncan building on June 18, 2022, and the accusation does not appear in any court record or affidavit. However, the accusation in the press release proves that the DoJ and U.S. attorneys were aware of the incident on June 18, 2022. Yet they withheld the FPS report about this incident from Reno and his attorney.
The DoJ never delivered the June 18 FPS report to Mark Reno’s attorney
On September 23, 2024, I submitted a FOIA request to the Executive Office for United States Attorneys (EOUSA) for any records which prove the transfer of the June 18 FPS report to Reno’s attorney. My request was at first denied but later upheld on administrative appeal.
After three inquiries from the office of U.S. Representative Tim Burchett, I received a letter on May 12, 2025, stating: “A search for records located in the United States Attorney’s Office(s) for the Eastern District of Tennessee has revealed no responsive records regarding the above subject.”
In other words, U.S. attorneys have no records proving that they delivered the June 18 FPS report to Reno’s attorney.
The DoJ posthumously accused Mark Reno of the Planned Parenthood arson
Mark Reno is better known in Knoxville as the man the DoJ accused of burning down Knoxville’s Planned Parenthood. The DoJ made its accusation on November 1, 2022, a little more than two months after Reno’s death.
However, the Knoxville Fire Department later released Planned Parenthood’s security footage showing the real arsonist, a man much thinner and more agile than Reno. In its final report, the Knoxville Fire Department also concluded that the fire was started from inside the building, and that the arsonist likely climbed through the narrow, unsecured windows of the new addition.
The author is grateful to Mrs. Taylor Williams for her assistance with this article.