Protesters push for stay in Swearingen execution
On the eve of his scheduled execution, a small group of death penalty abolitionists rallied Tuesday for condemned prisoner Larry Ray Swearingen, criticizing the evidence used to convict the Willis man in the death two decades ago of a Montgomery County college coed.
Barring a last-minute reprieve from the U.S. Supreme Court, Swearingen, who was convicted of raping and murdering 19-yearold Melissa Trotter, is scheduled to die Wednesday night in Huntsville after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied his request for clemency Monday.
The execution date is the sixth for Swearingen since his conviction. Every other time, he’s eked out a stay before reaching the gurney.
Yancy Balderas, whose husband Juan has been on death row since March 2014 when he was convicted in a 2005 gang-related shooting, described Swearingen’s conviction as an injustice that relied on “junk science.”
“So much happened in this case, and it should be looked at,” she said. “What they did to him is just wrong.”
By Swearingen’s account, he and Trotter had a causal relationship. They’d hung out the day of the slaying — but he maintains he wasn’t the one who killed her or dumped her body in the Sam Houston National Forest.
“The evidence really did establish the friendship,” Swearingen told the Houston Chronicle earlier this year, “and then they turned it into murder to support
their conviction.”
The two were spotted together in the college library on Dec. 8, 1998, which was the day the teen disappeared.
A teacher saw Trotter leaving campus with a man, but Swearingen said it wasn’t him.
Since his conviction, Swearingen’s defense team — Houstonbased lawyer James Rytting and Innocence Project of New York attorney Bryce Benjet — have filed an avalanche of appeals, seeking to pick apart every piece of the conviction.
The half-dozen death penalty abolitionists gathered outside the courthouse Tuesday echoed those concerns.
“The main thing is he was incarcerated when her death occurred,” said Diane Conkling, who showed up with a sign condemning the state’s effort to “murder a man on junk science.”
“Just because he was with her prior to that,” she added, “you can’t just pin it on him just because he was the most convenient person.”
Montgomery County District Attorney Brett Ligon panned the claims of junk science, which he chalked up to nothing more than Swearingen’s “attempt to scheme his way off of death row.”
In recent weeks, Swearingen and his legal team launched lastminute appeals based on claims of false and misleading testimony from state experts who explained away evidence showing that blood found under Trotter’s fingernails wasn’t his.
That find could have pointed to
“You can’t just pin it on him just because he was the most convenient person.”
Diane Conkling, protester
another suspect, but at trial, the crime lab said it was likely contamination, thus negating its potentially exculpatory value.
This year, the crime lab wrote a letter clarifying that their expert should not have speculated about contamination outside the lab, an admission Rytting viewed as damaging to the state’s case — but one that did not impress the federal appeals court that turned down the claim last week.
Still, litigation relating to crime lab testimony is winding through the courts, as well as a long-shot federal lawsuit filed last week challenging aspects of the state’s lethal injection protocol. To local prosecutors — and to state and federal appeals courts — none of the defense team’s claims seem like enough to call into question the conviction.
“The imposition of the death penalty is an immense and terrible responsibility,” Ligon said. “Mr. Swearingen was indicted and convicted by a jury of Montgomery County citizens a decade before I took office. I did an independent review of the trial, transcripts, hearings and subsequent writs before personally concluding that not only was the guilty verdict appropriate but that the imposition of the state’s ultimate penalty of death was justified.”