‘I refuse to accept this as my fate’: Larry Swearingen slated for execution despite claims of innocence
As his scheduled death date approached, Larry Ray Swearingen still refused to accept that the Huntsville gurney could be his fate.
The 48-year-old Montgomery County man was sentenced to die for the 1998 murder of Melissa Trotter, a college student who was raped, strangled and left in the Sam Houston National Forest with torn pair of pantyhose tied around her neck. But Swearingen always said he didn’t do it and, after eking out stays before each of the last five scheduled death dates, he was skeptical the Aug. 21 execution could come to pass.
“I don't believe you're going to kill me,” he told the Houston Chronicle, likening the case against him to a house of cards. “I believe I will pull that one single card and it's gonna come tumbling down.”
In recent weeks, the courts denied appeal after appeal, and the state parole board on Monday unanimously turned down his one shot at a commutation. He is scheduled to die at 6 p.m.
The condemned man’s lawyers have repeatedly decried the case as a wrongful conviction built on “junk science” and circumstantial evidence that they say will leave behind unanswered questions about everything from the expert testimony to cellphone forensics.
“They may put Larry Swearingen under,” said Houston-based attorney James Rytting. “But his case is not going to die.”
Still, Montgomery County prosecutors are confident in their conviction and the “mountain” of evidence against him - as is Sandy Trotter, the slain teen’s mother. For her, there’s never been a doubt who did it.
“He has stopped my life,” she said late Tuesday. “But there are no winners in this. We’ll never have Melissa back and eventually his family won’t have him.”
A ‘typical 19-year-old’
In December of 1998, Melissa Trotter was a student at Montgomery College, where she hoped to hone her foreign language skills and eventually pursue a career in business. Before that she’d taught at vacation Bible school and grown into a “typical 19-year-old,” according to her mother.
She met Swearingen, eight years her senior, around town - “here and there,” by his account. They struck up a casual relationship.
“The evidence really did establish the friendship,” Swearingen said, “and then they turned it into murder to support their conviction.”
The two were spotted together in the college library on Dec. 8, 1998 - the day the teen disappeared. A biology teacher saw Trotter leaving campus with a man, but Swearingen has maintained it wasn’t him. And, though forensic evidence later showed the teen had been in his car, Swearingen said it wasn’t necessarily that day.
During trial, the former electrician’s wife testified that she came home that evening to find their trailer a mess. In the middle of it all were Trotter’s lighter and a pack of her brand of cigarettes. The unexpected disarray could have been the sign of a struggle, but Swearingen chalked it up to a break-in, and later filed a police report saying his home had been burgled while he was gone.
But aside from the cigarettes and the chaos, authorities eventually found half a pair of pantyhose, which state experts later said matched the hosiery wrapped around Trotter’s neck. Hunters only found her decomposing body in the woods weeks later, but by that time authorities in Galveston had already arrested Swearingen for outstanding traffic tickets.
In the summer of 2000, he was sentenced to death.
‘Could they whack me? Absolutely.’
Since his conviction, Swearingen’s legal team has worked to dismantle the case against him which was always circumstantial: There was never any biological evidence tying Swearingen to the slaying.
And the cell phone forensics, his lawyers said, don’t really show that he made a call while driving back from the forest. The pantyhose aren’t really a definitive match, they argued, and the timeline of Trotter’s death could be off. Swearingen may have already been in jail by the time the teen died, his lawyers said.
For years, the defense team also pushed for additional DNA testing in the case. In 2017, attorneys on both sides finally came to an agreement on what evidence to test: cigarette butts from the woods, hair and some of the teen's clothes.
But ultimately the testing made no difference, since most of the material didn’t come back positive for any male DNA at all, and the cigarette butts only matched the hunters who found her body.
Earlier this year, a Montgomery County court signed off on another execution date - Swearingen’s sixth since his conviction.
“I refuse to accept this as my fate,” he told Chronicle this year. “Could they whack me? Absolutely. If they do, they do - but I'm not going to crawl on my knees, I'm not going to grovel.”
In recent weeks, he filed appeals hoping to poke holes in the state’s testimony about the blood flecks found under Trotter’s fingernails. The crime lab determined years ago that the blood wasn’t Swearingen’s, a fact that could have helped point to another suspect. But an expert at trial explained that away, saying it could be contamination, thus negating its potentially exculpatory value.
This year, the crime lab wrote a pair of letters clarifying that their expert should not have been so certain about the pantyhose match or the possibility of contamination regarding the blood flecks, admissions Rytting viewed as damaging to the state’s case. But those claims did not impress the prosecution, or the courts that turned down his appeals.
“Anyone at this point in this process who believes that Mr. Swearingen is innocent is either delusional or is incapable of reading,” said Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon. “No court who has reviewed his frivolous claims has seriously questioned his guilt.”
A death row plot
The paperwork snafu came just after investigators uncovered a bizarre death row confession plot, when Swearingen and another prisoner allegedly hatched a plan to cast doubt on his conviction. In 2017 - weeks before both men were scheduled to die - “Tourniquet Killer” Anthony Shore came forward claiming that Swearingen had asked him to make a last-minute confession falsely admitting to Trotter’s slaying.
Investigators even found a hand-drawn map in Shore’s cell, showing the supposed location of more evidence in the 1998 case. The find kicked off a new hunt for 20-year-old evidence, but after scouring a lake bottom authorities came up empty-handed.
Ultimately, Shore told investigators he’d only agreed to the false confession to get his friend off - not because he’d actually committed the crime. Still, the twist threatened to muddy the waters in both cases and prompted officials to push back Shore’s execution, though it was the clerical error that instead won Swearingen a stay that fall.
‘I want him to know I’m there’
For two decades, Sandy Trotter has waited for this day. She’s convinced of Swearingen’s guilt, not swayed by his attorneys’ claims anymore than the courts or the jurors.
“The overwhelming evidence is not just a coincidence,” she said. “There was a trial; he was found guilty, and they agreed on a sentence.”
She just had no idea the whole process could take so long, or lead to so many last-minute stays.
“We have never gotten to the prison before,” she said. “It’s never gotten to the day of.”
When the moment comes, Sandy plans to look him in the eye.
“I hope he’s not too sedated,” she said. “I want him to know I’m there.”
Afterward, she plans for a balloon release back home in Willis.
Source: Houston Chronicle, Keri Blakinger, August 21, 2019
Larry Swearingen is set for execution for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.
Swearingen has maintained his innocence in the strangling death of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Texas prosecutors, however, have no doubt he is her killer.
A staunch claim of innocence and doubts over forensic science have long engulfed the Texas death penalty case of Larry Swearingen. On Wednesday, for the 6th time, he is set for execution.
The now 48-year-old man has lived on death row for nearly two 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 have taken 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 is her killer.
Now, unless the U.S. Supreme Court or Texas Gov. Greg Abbott steps in, Swearingen will be put to death by lethal injection in Huntsville after 6 p.m.
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 have 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 argue 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 have 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 is 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 are Trotter’s time of death, the matching of pantyhose and blood flecks found with her fingernail scrapings. The courts have 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 has 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 2 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 second 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 blood, 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 have all rejected the most recent 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.
Rytting said Tuesday he planned to file a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the DPS letters. Abbott could also issue a 30-day temporary stay on his own, though he has never done so. 11 other men are scheduled for execution in Texas through December.
Source: The Texas Tribune, Staff, August 21, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
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