The Texas Tribune reports, "Criminal Appeals Court Grants Rare Execution Stay." It's by Brandi Grissom.
In a rare move today, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, stayed the scheduled August 18 execution of Larry Swearingen.
He was convicted of the 1998 rape and murder of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. The Montgomery Community College student’s body was discovered in the Sam Houston National Forest on Jan. 2, 1999, nearly a month after she disappeared from campus. Witnesses said they saw Trotter leaving the campus with Swearingen on Dec. 8, 1998 — the last time she was seen alive.
Swearingen’s lawyers have filed repeated pleas in state and federal court urging jurists to consider their arguments that forensic science proves that the 40-year-old inmate could not have committed the crime, because he was in jail when Trotter was murdered.
And:
Entomologists, pathologists and an anthropologist who examined the evidence from Trotter’s body have said that she could not have been in the forest for longer than two weeks. Her body, the experts report, showed only enough decomposition to have been in the woods for a few days to, and at most, two weeks. That means her murder would have happened after Swearingen was jailed.
In 2007, Dr. Joye Carter, the Harris County medical examiner who testified at Swearingen’s trial that Trotter had been in the forest for 25 days, reviewed new evidence and submitted an affidavit in which she concluded the murder happened within two weeks of the day Trotter's body was discovered.
James Rytting, Swearingen’s lawyer, said he hopes the stay will give defense lawyers the opportunity to have a full court hearing on the forensic science.
The CCA order staying the execution is available in Adobe .pdf format.
Earlier coverage of Larry Swearingen's case begins at the link.
UPDATE - The Saturday Houston Chronicle carries, "Condemned inmate Swearingen gets reprieve." It's written by Renee C. Lee.
Death row inmate Larry Swearingen has dodged an execution date for a third time in the 1998 slaying of a Montgomery County college student.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Thursday that new evidence in Swearingen's appeal raised the issue of due process violation. The court remanded the case to the 9th state District Court in Montgomery County for a hearing.
Swearingen was set to die by lethal injection Aug. 18. He won reprieves in January 2007 and January 2009, each handed down a day before his execution.
Swearingen's attorney, James Rytting, said his client was convicted on false forensic testimony. A former Harris County medical examiner who testified during Swearingen's capital murder trial changed her testimony in 2007.
"It was a courageous decision by the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals," Rytting said. "It was the right decision, and it acknowledges the science in this case is powerful proof that Mr. Swearingen could not have committed the crime."
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