DNA testing results released on death row case of Larry Swearingen

More than a year after prosecutors agreed to DNA testing on decades-old evidence in a Montgomery County death row case, the results are in - and they didn't reveal anything new.

Most of the aging evidence sent to the lab didn't show any male DNA at all, prosecutors said, while the genetic material pulled from cigarette butts found near Melissa Trotter's body only traced back to the hunters who found her.

"Everything (the defense) requested to be tested has been tested at this point," said Montgomery County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn.

Now, with no pending appeals and no new DNA to help validate his claims of innocence, convicted killer Larry Swearingen could be one step closer to yet another execution date.

"Unfortunately, the testing we did really didn't move the ball," said Bryce Benjet, a defense attorney with the Innocence Project. "At the end of the day, it was useful to the extent that it can show that we tested every item and none of that testing has pointed to Larry Swearingen."

The 47-year-old was sentenced to die two decades ago for the murder of a Montgomery College student. In the years since, the Willis man has fended off the state's repeated attempts to execute him, lobbing a slew of appeals, including multiple pleas for testing on pantyhose and cigarettes found in the woods near the slain woman's body.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers finally came to a testing agreement in late 2017, after years of back-and-forth over various proposals.

In addition to the cigarette butts and some of the slain teen's clothes, the lab analyzed hair stuck in a knot tied in the torn pair of pantyhose used in the murder. Though the strands looked like they may have belonged to someone other than Trotter, the 2-decade-old sample didn't net any DNA for testing, Benjet said.

Attorneys also asked for testing on a different piece of pantyhose found near Swearingen's trailer after the crime. Whether that's the other half of the pair used in the killing has been a point of dispute, but testing on it showed some DNA pointing to Swearingen – and nothing pointing to Trotter.

The last time anyone saw Trotter alive was on Dec. 8, 1998, when she and Swearingen were spotted together in the community college library. Afterward, a biology teacher caught sight of Trotter leaving the school with a man.

Hair and fiber evidence later showed that she'd been in Swearingen's car at some point before she vanished.

Swearingen's wife testified that she came home that evening to find the place in disarray - and in the middle of it all were a lighter and cigarettes believed to belong to Trotter. Swearingen later filed a burglary report, saying his home had been broken into while he was out of town.

That afternoon, he placed a call routed through a cell tower near FM 1097 in Willis - a spot prosecutors say he would have passed while heading from his house to the Sam Houston National Forest where Trotter's decomposing body was found 25 days later.

Crime scene investigators recovered biological material from the scene - but there was never any conclusive link to Swearingen. Instead, he was convicted and sentenced to death based on what courts later described as a "mountain" of circumstantial evidence.

Since he was sent to death row in 2000, he's had at least 5 execution dates set and canceled.

In 2017, he made national headlines as the result of a plot with another condemned prisoner, serial killer Anthony Shore. Shore, who has since been executed, was allegedly planning to wrongly confess to Trotter's slaying in the final minutes before his death.

But authorities got wind of the supposed scheme, and called off Shore's execution date to investigate further. Then, the courts called off Swearingen's death date a month later - not because of the plot or any concerns about his possible innocence, but because of a clerical error.

Afterward, lawyers on both sides of the case agreed to testing, a process that's dragged out for more than a year.

Currently, Swearingen doesn't have any appeals pending, but Benjet – who is handling the case along with Houston-based attorney James Rytting – hinted at the possibility of more court filings ahead, including claims questioning the cell phone forensics used to pinpoint Swearingen's location.

Source: Houston Chronicle, Keri Blakinger, February 5, 2019

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