DIR Return Create A Forum - Home
---------------------------------------------------------
~ Just Retribution ~
HTML https://justretribution.createaforum.com
---------------------------------------------------------
*****************************************************
DIR Return to: Executed
*****************************************************
#Post#: 352--------------------------------------------------
~ Larry Swearingen, 21Aug19, (TX) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: May 17, 2019, 10:50 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Sixth execution date set for convicted Montgomery County killer
Larry Swearingen--
Friday, March 15, 2019
[IMG]
HTML http://s.hdnux.com/photos/67/22/64/14495016/3/920x920.jpg[/img]
In this Jan. 7, 2009, file photo, Larry Swearingen speaks from
the interview cage at the death row facility in Livingston,
Texas
For the sixth time, the state of Texas is set to execute
convicted killer Larry Ray Swearingen, a Willis man convicted of
slaughtering Montgomery County college student Melissa Trotter
before dumping her body in the Sam Houston National Forest.
In the two decades he's been on death row, the 47-year-old
former mechanic has repeatedly professed his innocence while
narrowly avoiding the gurney again and again.
But in February - weeks after getting back results from a months
long DNA-testing process that failed to turn up new information
in the case - prosecutors filed a motion asking for an Aug. 21
execution date.
Now Montgomery County's only death row prisoner, Swearingen was
sentenced to die in 2000, two years after the slaying that
landed him behind bars. Weeks before Christmas 1998, Trotter and
Swearingen were spotted in the library at Montgomery Community
College. They left together, and it was the last time anyone saw
the 19-year-old alive.
Hair and fiber evidence later showed the teen had been in
Swearingen's car at some point before she vanished.
8)
#Post#: 378--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Larry Swearingen, 21Aug19, (TX) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: August 21, 2019, 8:12 am
---------------------------------------------------------
6th request for stay of execution denied for convicted killer
Larry Ray Swearingen--
Friday, August 16, 2019
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Texas - Larry Ray Swearingen's sixth request
for a stay of his execution was denied Friday, according to
authorities.
Swearingen's execution is scheduled for Wednesday. He has
avoided lethal injection five times.
Swearingen was convicted of the 1998 kidnapping and murder of
19-year-old college student Melissa Trotter, of Willis.
The crime
On Dec. 8, 1998, Melissa Trotter, 19, disappeared from what is
now the Lone Star College campus near The Woodlands. Swearingen
was arrested on outstanding traffic warrants on Dec. 11.
Prosecutors said he initially became a suspect because
surveillance video showed Swearingen talking with Trotter at the
North Shore Marina two days before her disappearance, when the
pair made lunch plans. Court records said Swearingen was seen
with Trotter on campus the day she disappeared. Investigators
said Trotter's car remained on campus the day she disappeared.
Trotter's body was found in the Sam Houston National Forest on
Jan. 2, 1999. A memorial plaque to Trotter remains on the
campus.
Prosecutors said friends of Trotter initially told investigators
about Swearingen.
"They notified police (and said), 'Hey, we saw Melissa talking
with this guy. This is what he looked like. This is what his
truck looked like,'" said Kelly Blackburn, trial bureau chief
for the Montgomery County District Attorney's Office.
"Why did he kill her?" Channel 2 investigative reporter Robert
Arnold asked Blackburn.
"Because she wouldn't have sex with him," Blackburn said.
8)
HTML http://www.click2houston.com/news/local/6th-request-for-stay-of-execution-denied-for-convicted-killer-larry-ray-swearingen
#Post#: 381--------------------------------------------------
Re: ~ Larry Swearingen, 21Aug19, (TX) ~
DIR By: BuzzC
Date: August 22, 2019, 1:06 am
---------------------------------------------------------
Texas executes man with history of violence against women for
1998 slaying of college student--
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
[IMG]
HTML http://a57.foxnews.com/static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2019/08/640/320/Larry-Swearingen.jpg?ve=1&tl=1[/img]
A Texas man with a history of violence against women was put to
death Wednesday for the abduction, rape and murder of a suburban
Houston community college student over 20 years ago.
Larry Swearingen, 48, who argued his conviction was based on
junk science, received a lethal injection at the state
penitentiary in Huntsville for the December 1998 killing of
19-year-old Melissa Trotter.
She was last seen leaving her community college in Conroe, and
her body turned up nearly a month later in a forest near
Huntsville, about 70 miles north of Houston.
Swearingen, who had always maintained his innocence in Trotter’s
death, was the 12th inmate put to death this year in the U.S.
and the fourth in Texas, the nation’s busiest capital punishment
state. Eleven more executions are scheduled in Texas this year.
Prosecutors said they stood behind the “mountain of evidence”
used to convict Swearingen in 2000. They described him as a
sociopath with a criminal history of violence against women and
said he even tried to get a fellow death row inmate to take the
blame for his crime.
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.
Swearingen, who also was represented by the Innocence Project,
had previously received five stays of execution. He was put to
death after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his final appeal,
which focused on allegations prosecutors used “false and
misleading testimony” related to blood evidence and a piece of
pantyhose used to strangle Trotter.
Kelly Blackburn, the trial bureau chief for the Montgomery
County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted Swearingen,
said the killer’s efforts to discredit the evidence were
unsuccessful because his experts’ opinions didn’t “hold water.”
“I have absolutely zero doubt that anybody but Larry Swearingen
killed ... Melissa Trotter,” he said.
Blackburn said Swearingen killed Trotter because he was angry
that she had stood him up for a date. At the time of Trotter’s
killing, Swearingen was under indictment for kidnapping a former
fiancée.
“Lord, forgive them,” Swearingen said after the warden asked if
he had a final statement. “They don’t know what they’re doing.”
Then as the lethal dose of pentobarbital began, he said he could
“hear it” going into a vein in his arm, then that he could taste
it.
“It’s actually burning in my right arm. I don’t feel anything in
the left arm,” he said.
Almost immediately, he took a short breath, then started to
snore quietly. He stopped moving.
He never opened his eyes and never looked at the witnesses who
were there on his victim’s behalf, including her parents, who
watched through a window just a few feet from him.
At 6:47 p.m. CT — 12 minutes after the lethal dose started —
Swearingen was pronounced dead.
8)
*****************************************************
Page 1 of 1