For the sixth time, the state of Texas is set to execute convicted killer Larry Ray Swearingen, a Willis man convicted of slaughtering Montgomery County college student Sandy Trotter before dumping her body in the Sam Houston National Forest.
In the two decades he's been on death row, the 47-year-old former mechanic has repeatedly professed his innocence while narrowly avoiding the gurney again and again. Once, he won a stay over a clerical error. Other times, it was questions about everything from autopsy evidence to entomology that helped him avoid the Huntsville death chamber.
But in February - weeks after getting back results from a monthslong DNA-testing process that failed to turn up new information in the case - prosecutors filed a motion asking for an Aug. 21 execution date.
Judge J.D. Langley greenlit the request - the state's ninth in the case - on Tuesday, a move likely to set off a flurry of last-minute appeals.
"We've already proved that Larry Swearingen didn't commit this crime and the forensics have just been ignored," said defense attorney James Rytting. "We continue to find serious problems with the technical and scientific evidence used to convict him."
Specifically, he said, the cell phone evidence "was complete junk - and we're going to demonstrate it." He also called into question other forensics, including fiber analysis and the use of torn pantyhose from near Swearingen's home that the state said matched material from the crime scene.
"The doubts will be there forever, like another Cameron Todd Willingham," Rytting said, referencing a controversial 2004 execution.
But Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon does not share that uncertainty.
"We're cautiously optimistic that this execution date will go through," he said Wednesday. "However, given the nature of death penalty litigation and appeals it would not be unusual for last minute writs to be filed."
Now Montgomery County's only death row prisoner, Swearingen was sentenced to die in 2000, two years after the slaying that landed him behind bars. Weeks before Christmas 1998, Trotter and Swearingen were spotted in the library at Montgomery Community College. They left together, and it was the last time anyone saw the 19-year-old alive.
Hair and fiber evidence later showed the teen had been in Swearingen's car at some point before she vanished.
During trial, 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. It could have been the sign of a struggle, but 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 woods 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.
For years, defense lawyers fought for DNA testing in the case. Finally, both sides came to an agreement in 2017.
In the months that followed, experts analyzed cigarette butts from the crime scene, hair and some of the slain teen's clothing. But most of the aging evidence didn't turn up any male DNA at all, and the cigarettes only returned DNA from the hunters who discovered the girl's body.
Though the testing agreement came weeks after a last-minute stay of execution, it wasn't the long-standing questions over DNA that in 2017 saved him from the death chamber. Instead, it was a clerical error - and an alleged death row confession plot.
That fall, Swearingen made national headlines as the result of a scheme hatched with 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 plan, and called off Shore's execution date to investigate further. The former tow truck driver was executed in early 2018.
The Lone Star State has executed two men so far in 2019, and another five death dates are on the calendar.
Source: chron.com, Keri Blakinger, March 13, 2019
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