Last night, the State of Texas put to death a man convicted of rape and murder that many experts say he couldn’t have committed.
In 1998, A 19-year-old college student named Melissa Trotter disappeared from her Montgomery College campus. Her body was discovered 3 weeks later, in 1999. At the time of the discovery, Larry Swearingen was already behind bars for unpaid traffic violations.
At the time, prosecutors assumed Trotter was killed the same day she disappeared. The medical examiner testified to that at Swearingen’s trial. Since then, seven different pathologists have said that she likely died within 2 weeks of her body being discovered, and not on the day of her disappearance. This new timeline offered by experts gave Swearingen a rock-solid alibi: jail.
Swearingen maintained his innocence since his conviction in 2000 right through his death yesterday, proclaiming as his last words “Lord, forgive [the executioners], they don’t know what they’re doing.”
It took six scheduled execution dates for Texas to complete the sentence rendered against Swearingen. The previous five were stayed on appeals, but he was not so lucky on the last count.
As CBS News reported yesterday:
Swearingen had long tried to cast doubt on the evidence used to convict him, particularly claims by prosecution experts that Trotter’s body had been in the woods for 25 days. His longtime appellate attorney, James Rytting, said at least five defense experts concluded her body was there for no more than 14 days, and because Swearingen had been arrested by then on outstanding traffic violations, he couldn’t have left her body there.
They went on further:
In addition to questioning the date of Trotter’s death, Rytting maintained a piece of pantyhose used to strangle Trotter was not a match to a piece found in Swearingen’s trailer. He also disputed prosecution experts’ claims dismissing blood found in Trotter’s fingernail shavings that was determined to not be Swearingen’s. He said that evidence supported the defense theory that someone else killed her.
In letters sent to Swearingen’s attorneys in July and August, the Texas Department of Public Safety said its technicians should not have been as definitive in their testimony about the blood found in the fingernails and the pantyhose match.
Now, the prosecutors in Texas have long maintained they have ‘no doubt’ that Swearingen raped and killed Trotter. They convinced a jury of it at trial, and that conviction held up throughout the appeals process. Only God, Swearingen, and Trotter know what actually happened or didn’t happen. But, there seems to be enough reason to doubt the conviction.
Earlier just this year, though through partisan political games, the legislature overrode Governor Sununu’s veto and killed Capital Punishment in New Hampshire. That means, a case like this can never happen here, thankfully. Perhaps Swearingen is guilty as charged, convicted, and sentenced, but perhaps he was not. It appears we will never know, and if we ever find out he was innocent – it will be too late.
