Posted on 08/22/2019 6:44:57 AM PDT by Ennis85
25 years!?!?!?
I suggested that they get a veterinarian to administer the lethal injection as those guys are acting in a humane gesture of "putting someone to sleep" instead of cruel and unusual regular doctors who sterilize the needles before the injections so no one gets a nasty infection that could kill them.
Its almost impossible to get any factual reporting on this case; almost all stories follow the weak line that he was innocent.
The reporting on this case has been awful.
But why deny DNA analysis?
It’s 99.5% definitive.
Texas Schedules Execution but Refuses DNA Tests Which Could Prove a Man's Innocence
He met his maker for the good or bad.
The philosophy of the justice system has always been “Better 100 guilty men go free than a single innocent man be convicted.” That has allowed the test of “reasonable doubt” to expanded to farcical levels.
To the best of human abilitirs, it was established that this guy was guilty. That’s a reasonable standard.
***EXPERTS!!!***
[But why deny DNA analysis?
It’s 99.5% definitive.]
“I was a screw up. I was a violent screw up. Two plus two and you get the wrong conclusion. ‘Hey, he’s done these things before. Look over here; yeah we have a good suspect here,’ ” Swearingen said.
Swearingen immediately became the suspect in the Melissa Trotter missing persons case. They had been seen together at the college the day she went missing. Three days after her disappearance, Swearingen was arrested on outstanding traffic warrants. He’s been behind bars ever since.
While being questioned by investigators in 1998, he told them he didn’t know Melissa Trotter and had never spoken to her.
“I don’t even know the girl. Up until that point I didn’t even know that the girl existed,” Swearingen told officers.
“Then why would she have your pager number?” an officer asked.
“She asked me if there was a way to get hold of my sister,” Swearingen responded. “When I walked up to the marina she asked me, ‘Aren’t you Becky’s brother?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’”
“You ain’t never talked to her before?” an officer asked.
Swearingen responded, “No, never.”
On Jan., 2 1999 — 25 days after her disappearance — hunters found the body of Melissa Trotter in a remote location in the Sam Houston National Forest. She was partially clothed. Investigators determined she had been strangled with a leg segment cut from a pair of pantyhose.
It was now a murder investigation. And the evidence against Swearingen was piling up. Police searched his truck and found strands of Melissa Trotter’s hair.
Swearingen now admits she had been in his truck many times.
“We were dating. We were friends with benefits. We went out and had a good time. I enjoyed being with her, and she enjoyed being with me,” he said. “What we did or didn’t do is nobody’s business. There has to be some chivalry in the court system where you don’t degrade someone who can’t be here to say, ‘Yes, that’s true,’ or ‘No, that’s not true.’ ”
While Swearingen was in the county jail, there was a strange twist in the case. A letter written in lousy Spanish claimed that Swearingen was innocent. In the letter, there were details about the case that had not been in the news — about the position of the body and the color of Melissa Trotter’s underwear. This letter could exonerate Swearingen, except for the fact that he wrote it.
“When they started printing in the paper that they were going to kill me — that’s what prompted the Spanish letter,” Swearingen explained. “I was scared to death about it.”
Swearingen said he knew those incriminating details because he had the autopsy report and crime scene photos.
Prosecutors argued they had plenty of evidence that tied Swearingen to the Melissa Trotter murder: a cell phone tower “pinged” him near where the body was found, a match of the murder weapon pantyhose was found at Swearingen’s trailer. Polyester fibers from his truck were on Trotter’s coat.]
That prosecutor should be executed.
Wew! Glad to be back on FR. Was traveling all yesterday and now have proof that Larry Swearingen is totally innocent! Can’t wait to exonerate him, oh and all have proof of Jeff Epstiens innocence as well. All I need is to get that evidence out before it’s too late!
This is pretty damning evidence. I could have given him a life sentence on it, but would have to see everything before a death sentence.
Having sat on a murder trial you see a lot of evidence and afterwards you hear in public about a lot things that happened in the trial that did and didn’t happen. In my instance the death penalty was off the table before it started. We ended up finding the defendant guilty and sentenced him to 20 yrs. for the murder and 10 for a first degree assault with a deadly weapon, so 25 yrs. without parole under KY’s weird parole laws. Had we given him life he could have received parole in 17 yrs. make no sense whatsoever.
While the evidence you mention is quite compelling, there is no excuse for not doing DNA testing on the available evidence.
The fact that it took 21 years true kill a killer is evidence of a severely non-functional system...
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