I’ve blogged before about Larry Swearingen, who is on death row and is scheduled for execution on January 27 even though forensic evidence clearly demonstrates his innocence of the murder of Melissa Trotter. Multiple experts, including the Harris County medical examiner who originally testified against him at his trial, now say that Trotter’s body was dumped while Swearingen was sitting in a jail cell. Yet the Court of Criminal Appeals, that bastion of injustice and illogic, has refused to order a new trial. It’s appalling, and is going to be a huge, avoidable tragedy if nothing happens to prevent it.
Now the Chron’s Lisa Falkenberg has picked up on the Texas Monthly story about Swearingen. She adds a few new details, including this:
Attorneys with the New-York based Innocence Project are also working feverishly on requests for DNA testing on the panty hose, Trotter’s clothing and more blood scrapings. They plan to appeal to Gov. Rick Perry’s office for a stay, and have unsuccessfully tried to get newly elected Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon to support a request for DNA testing.
Ligon didn’t return my call. Marc Brumberger, who handles the office’s appeals, said the new evidence doesn’t prove Swearingen didn’t kill Trotter. It only “throws in the prospect” that Swearingen may have initially refrigerated or frozen her body, then had help from an accomplice moving it into the woods while he was in jail.
[Swearingen’s attorney James] Rytting calls that far-fetched theory “guilt by imagination.” He said the DA’s office is grasping for explanations now that their case is crumbling.
“Their case is a lie and they’re going to kill him anyway,” Rytting says.
I shouldn’t be by now, but I continue to be amazed at how utterly pigheaded some DA’s offices can be about this. Have we learned nothing from Dallas’ experience? Let me put this in the simplest terms I can, simple enough that even Brett Ligon and Mark Brumberger can understand it: The actions of the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office will enable a murderer to walk free and possibly to kill again. Even if you don’t care about Larry Swearingen, you ought to care about that.