[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TEXAS, USA

[Rick Halperin]

August 21



TEXAS----execution

Texas executed Larry Swearingen for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad 
science got him on death row.

Swearingen consistently maintained his innocence in the strangling death of 
19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Texas prosecutors, however, had no doubt he was 
her killer.


For decades, a staunch claim of innocence and doubts over forensic science 
engulfed the death penalty case of Larry Swearingen. On Wednesday, he was 
executed in Texas' death chamber.

The 48-year-old man lived on death row for nearly 2 decades, consistently 
expressing his innocence in the 1998 strangling death of Melissa Trotter, a 
19-year-old community college student in Montgomery County he has said was his 
friend. Multiple state courts had previously taken five execution dates off the 
calendar over the years to look into different issues surrounding Swearingen’s 
conviction, but prosecutors and Trotter’s family remain firmly convinced he was 
her killer.

After a late appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court minutes before his 
scheduled execution time of 6 p.m., Swearingen was taken into the execution 
chamber in Huntsville and connected to an IV.

“Lord forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing,” Swearingen said into 
a microphone hanging above his head.

He was then injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital and pronounced dead at 
6:47 p.m., according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Swearingen only had a spiritual adviser present at his execution, watching 
through a glass pane in a small viewing room, according to a TDCJ witness list. 
Trotter's parents, brother, grandfather and uncle stood in an adjacent room.

Trotter had been missing for weeks before her body was found by hunters in the 
Sam Houston National Forest on Jan. 2, 1999, with a leg from a pair of 
pantyhose tied around her throat. Law enforcement had already pegged Swearingen 
as the main suspect in her disappearance, arresting him on unrelated traffic 
warrants 3 days after Trotter had last been seen with him on Dec. 8, 1998. 
Based on what judges have since called a mountain of circumstantial evidence, 
he was convicted and sentenced to death in 2000.

Swearingen and his legal team relentlessly fought his conviction and death 
sentence, gathering numerous scientists who concluded that, based on the 
condition her body was in when it was found, Trotter was killed within two 
weeks of being found — more than a week after Swearingen was already behind 
bars. They also argued against the science used by state experts who matched a 
leg of pantyhose in his home to the piece used to strangle Trotter. And they 
balked at the courts’ dismissal of blood flecks found under Trotter’s 
fingernails that did not match Trotter nor Swearingen.

“They are going to execute someone that the legitimate forensic science has 
proven innocent,” said James Rytting, Swearingen’s attorney, Tuesday. “And the 
execution is going through on the basis of other forensic science that is 
borderline quackery — in fact it is quackery.”

The Montgomery County district attorney’s office, however, has zero doubt that 
Swearingen was Trotter’s killer. Kelly Blackburn, the office’s trial bureau 
chief, recited a laundry list of circumstantial evidence prosecutors obtained 
to secure and uphold Swearingen’s conviction, including cell phone records that 
put him near the spot Trotter’s body was found, her hair in his truck, and some 
of her school papers being found near his parents’ home.

Blackburn also noted Swearingen’s actions after Trotter’s disappearance — 
saying he falsely reported a burglary when he and wife came back to their home 
in disarray. Trotter’s brand of cigarettes and a lighter were inside, even 
though neither Swearingen nor his wife smoked. And Swearingen also wrote an 
anonymous letter in Spanish with details of the crime scene to pull suspicion 
away from him. Swearingen later admitted to writing the letter, claiming the 
details came from an autopsy report he read. Blackburn said Tuesday some of the 
details were only known by police at the time.

“When you look at all the forensic evidence, and then all of the other 
circumstantial evidence...the only person who has ever been tied to this murder 
is Larry Swearingen,” he said.

The main conflicting points involving forensic science in Swearingen’s case 
were Trotter’s time of death, the matching of pantyhose and blood flecks found 
with her fingernail scrapings. The courts had long looked into the issues, 
sending Swearingen’s case back for reexamination several times and cancelling 
five previously-scheduled execution dates.

Swearingen brought forward multiple forensic experts who contested the state’s 
theory that Trotter was killed on the day she went missing after being seen 
with Swearingen, 25 days before her body was found — including the original 
medical examiner who said as much at trial. They instead said her body was 
decomposed to the point she would only have been dead for about two weeks. 
Blackburn said those expert statements don’t stand up to scrutiny, and that 
other factors, like the temperature and her body shape, needed to be taken into 
consideration. He said the temperature was below 30 degrees for 12 of the days 
she was missing.

Most recently, Swearingen filed appeals relating to the pantyhose and blood 
flecks, bringing forward new letters the Texas Department of Public Safety 
crime lab director sent to his attorneys in the last month. Swearingen argued 
the letters contradict testimony from trial that led to jurors convicting him 
in Trotter’s murder.

Brady Mills with DPS wrote in a July letter that, if the DPS criminalist at 
trial were to testify today, she would still report that the two pieces of 
pantyhose found in Swearingen’s home and on Trotter’s neck were once connected, 
but she would exclude the statement she made in 2000 that they were a match “to 
the exclusion of all others” because the agency’s terminology has changed and 
that association is no longer made.

Rytting said the pantyhose matching is an example of “quackery,” and said the 
pieces did not match at first but were “pushed and pulled” until they did. 
Blackburn emphasized though that Mills’ letter didn’t contradict the original 
testimony, and said the two pieces of fabric were an easy match.

“No reasonable person would believe that they did not come from the same pair 
of pantyhose,” he said.

A 2nd letter from Mills, however, stated a DPS witness should have given a 
“more appropriate answer” regarding blood flecks found on Trotter’s fingernails 
after they were submitted to the agency. The lab analyst at trial said the 
iblood, which Blackburn said amounted to a the size of a pinpoint, possibly 
came from contamination in the lab — not the crime scene. She said this was 
because the brighter color and composition of the blood indicated it was from 
after her death.

Mills said the analyst didn’t have enough information of the collection and 
storage process to make that opinion, and that the blood could have come from 
contamination or the actual evidence.

Rytting says the blood points to another man as Trotter’s murderer, adding that 
witnesses came later came forward to say she had been afraid of someone else 
who was threatening to kill her.

The courts rejected those appeals, with a federal appellate court on Friday 
nodding to an earlier ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals regarding 
the blood flecks.

“We are not persuaded that results showing the presence of another DNA donor in 
the fingernail scrapings would overcome the ‘mountain of evidence’ of the 
[Swearingen’s] guilt…” wrote the Texas court in 2014. “There are many ways 
someone else’s DNA could have ended up in the victim’s fingernails.”

Swearingen also filed a last-minute appeal in federal court arguing against 
Texas’ lethal injection methods, asking for testing of drugs whose expiration 
dates have been extended after retesting or an alternative execution method of 
a firing squad. That appeal was denied by the district court Tuesday.

Swearingen becomes the 4th condemned inmate executed in Texas this year, and 
the 562nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment on december 7, 
1982. Swearingen is the 44th condemned inmate to be put to death since Greg 
Abbott became governor in 2015. There are 11 more executions scheduled in Texas 
before the end of the year.

Swearingen becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in 
the USA and the 1,502nd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 
17, 1977.

(sources:  The Texas Tribune & Rick Halperin)







USA:





USA----impending/scheduled executions

With the execution of Larry Swearingen in Texas on August 21, the USA has
now executed 1,502 condemned individuals since the death penalty was
re-legalized on July 2, 1976 in the US Supreme Court Gregg v Georgia decision.

Gary Gilmore was the 1st person executed, in Utah, on January 17, 1977. Below
is a list of further scheduled executions as the nation continues its shameful
practice of state-sponsored killings.


NOTE: The list is likely to change over the coming months as new execution
dates are added and possible stays of execution occur.




1503-------Aug. 22------------Gary Ray Bowles----------Florida

1504-------Sept. 4------------Billy Crutsinger---------Texas

1505-------Sept. 10-----------Mark Anthony Soliz-------Texas

1506-------Sept 25------------Robert Sparks------------Texas

1507-------Oct. 1-------------Russell Bucklew----------Missouri

1508-------Oct. 2-------------Stephen Barbee-----------Texas

1509-------Oct. 10------------Randy Halprin------------Texas

1510-------Oct. 16------------Randall Mays-------------Texas

1511-------Oct. 30------------Ruben Gutierrez----------Texas

1512-------Nov. 3-9-----------Charles Rhines-----------South Dakota

1513-------Nov. 6-------------Justen Hall--------------Texas

1514-------Nov. 20------------Rodney Reed--------------Texas

1515-------Dec. 5-------------Lee Hall Jr.-------------Tennessee

1516-------Dec. 9-------------Daniel Lewis Lee---------Federal - Ark.

1517-------Dec. 11------------James Hanna--------------Ohio

1518-------Dec. 11------------Travis Runnels-----------Texas

1519-------Dec. 11------------Lezmond Mitchell---------Federal - Ariz.

1520-------Dec. 13------------Wesley Purkey------------Federal - Mo.

1521-------Jan. 13-----------Alfred Bourgeois----------Federal - Tex.

1522-------Jan. 15-----------Dusten Honken-------------Federal - Iowa

1523-------Jan. 16-----------Kareem Jackson------------Ohio

(source: Rick Halperin)