On
this date, August 21, 2019, Larry Swearingen was finally executed by lethal
injection in Texas for the rape and murder of Melissa Trotter 21 years ago in
1998. I will post information about him from several news source.
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Larry Swearingen has been executed for raping
and murdering college student Melissa Trotter in Texas, US, in December
1998
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‘Lord forgive ’em’: Larry Swearingen executed despite
claims of innocence
HUNTSVILLE—For
two decades, Larry Ray Swearingen told anyone who would listen that he did not
kill Melissa Trotter. He knew her, he said — but wasn’t the one who raped and
strangled the 19-year-old college student before dumping her body among the
trees of the Sam Houston National Forest.
But on
Wednesday night, the courts all turned down his final claims and the
48-year-old Montgomery County man met his end on the gurney in Huntsville. He
took his final breath at 6:47 p.m., becoming the fourth man executed this year
in the Lone Star State.
“Lord
forgive ’em,” he said. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Eyes
closed, he began narrating his own death: “I can hear it going through the vein
— I can taste it,” he said, before describing a burning in his right arm.
“I
don’t feel anything in the left,” he added. At 6:35, he began snoring. Twelve
minutes later, he died.
In
the past, he’d always managed to eke out last-minute stays before each of his
last five scheduled death dates - and for months he was skeptical that the Aug.
21 execution could really come to pass.
“I
don’t believe you’re going to kill me,” he told the Houston Chronicle in May,
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.”
But
just before 6 p.m., the U.S. Supreme Court denied his final appeal and
Swearingen’s hope for reprieve faded.
The
condemned man’s lawyers repeatedly decried the case as a wrongful conviction
built on “junk science” and circumstantial evidence that they say left behind
unanswered questions about everything from the expert testimony to cellphone
forensics.
“They
may put Larry Swearingen under,” said Houston-based attorney James Rytting said
before the execution. “But his case is not going to die.”
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At noon today, the
formal process began where Mr. Swearingen will likely be moved over to the area
before his last walk to the execution chamber.
For the next few
hours, the Trotter family will have the opportunity to speak with the warden
and they will be briefed on this afternoon’s timeline. The Trotter family will
be accompanied by the warden and several Texas Rangers, along with Montgomery
County Assistant District Attorney Kelly Blackburn.
At approx 6 p.m.,
the three-drug dose will be administered to Larry Swearingen, barring any
last-minute appeals to the US Supreme Court.
The United States
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit denied Swearingen’s latest appeal,
stating:
“Larry Ray
Swearingen, convicted nineteen years ago of capital murder for strangling
nineteen-year-old Melissa Trotter, seeks permission to file a fourth federal
habeas corpus petition. He also moves to stay, for the fifth time, his
execution date, scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, August 21, 2019.
Finding Swearingen’s claims fail to meet the strict requirements imposed by 28
U.S.C. § 2244(b) for authorizing a successive petition, we DENY his application
and also DENY his motion for stay of execution.”
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Still,
Montgomery County prosecutors were confident in their conviction and the
“mountain” of evidence against him - as was Sandy Trotter, the slain teen’s
mother. For her, there was never a doubt who did it.
“There
are no winners in this,” she said Tuesday. “We’ll never have Melissa back.”
After
trudging out of the death chamber, she and her family stood outside the prison,
apparently holding back tears as the prison spokesman read a statement on their
behalf, offering praise to God and thanking their supporters.
Prosecutor
Kelly Blackburn celebrated an end 19 years in the making.
“Larry Swearingen needs to be removed from the annals of history
as far as I’m concerned,” he said. “A bad man got what he
deserved tonight.”
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Melissa Trotter, 19, was a student at Lone Star
College when she was raped and murdered in 1998.
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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.
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'Lord
forgive them': Larry Swearingen executed for killing Conroe college student
Melissa Trotter
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‘Could they whack me? Absolutely.’
Following
his conviction, Swearingen’s legal team strove 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, didn’t really show that he made a
call while driving back from the forest. The pantyhose weren’t really a
definitive match, they argued, and the timeline of Trotter’s death could have
been 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 afterward. “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
the final 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.”
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An image of Melissa Trotter is held up as
Jeremy Desel, with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, reads a statement
by her parents, Sandy and Charles Trotter, after their daughter’s killer, Larry
Swearingen, was executed at the Huntsville Unit Texas State Penitentiary
Huntsville "Walls" Unit, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2019, in Huntsville.
Swearingen was sentenced to die nearly two decades ago after a jury convicted
him of raping and murdering 19-year-old Montgomery County college student
Melissa Trotter, then dumping her body in Sam Houston National Forest.
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A death row plot
It’s
not just the doggedness of Swearingen’s legal team — which also includes
Innocence Project of New York attorney Bryce Benjet — that helped win him stays
in the past. Two years ago, it was a
clerical error that let him avoid death, after the Montgomery County
District Clerk’s Office sent the execution order to the wrong place.
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.
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Sandy and Charles Trotter, parents of Melissa,
19-year-old college student who was raped and murdered in 1998, listen as their
statement is read after their daughter’s killer, Larry Swearingen, was executed
at the Huntsville Unit Texas State Penitentiary Huntsville "Walls"
Unit, Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2019, in Huntsville. Swearingen was sentenced to die
nearly two decades ago after a jury convicted him of raping and murdering
19-year-old Montgomery County college student Melissa Trotter, then dumping her
body in Sam Houston National Forest.
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‘I want him to know I’m there’
For
two decades, Sandy Trotter waited for this day. She was 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.
Before
the execution, Sandy said she planned to look the man convicted of killing her
daughter in the eye as he lay on the gurney.
“I hope he’s not too sedated,” she said. “I want him
to know I’m there.”
Surely,
the dying man must have known — but he kept his eyes screwed shut the entire
time.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Lord-forgive-em-Larry-Swearingen-14369155.php#photo-18141398
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Charles and Sandy Trotter, parents of the slain
student, say killer Larry Ray Swearingen has become a poster boy for those
opposed to the death penalty.
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OTHER
LINKS:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7378133/Man-set-executed-killing-Texas-college-student.html
Larry Swearingen is set for execution
for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.
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