Larry Swearingen - TX -Stayed

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Time is running out for inmate
(Houston Chronicle © 01/22/2009) (Registration Required)
The question isn’t whether Larry Ray Swearingen is a liar, or a cheater, or a schemer, or even a rapist. There is ample evidence to suggest he is all of these things. The question is whether he is a murderer. Or, more precisely, whether he is guilty of the 1998 capital murder for which he is set to die in five days. There is ample evidence to suggest that he is not. For starters, Swearing

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URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA


21 January 2009

UA 17/09 - Death penalty / Legal concern

USA (Texas) Larry Ray Swearingen (m), white, aged 37

Larry Swearingen is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 27 January. He was sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of Melissa Trotter in 1998. He maintains his innocence of the murder. Several forensic experts have provided statements and testimony supportive of his claim.

Melissa Trotter went missing on 8 December 1998. Larry Swearingen was arrested three days later, and has been incarcerated ever since. The body of Melissa Trotter was found in a forest on 2 January 1999. Larry Swearingen was tried for her murder, and sentenced to death.

On 14 January 2009, Larry Swearingen's lawyers filed an appeal in the US Supreme Court to stay his execution on grounds of innocence. The petition argues that "the State's only theory of guilt, which was that Mr. Swearingen killed the victim and left her body in the forest on December 8, 1998, twenty-five (25) days before the corpse was recovered on January 2, 1999, is not just implausible, it is utterly impossible." The Supreme Court has not yet ruled on the motion for a stay of execution.

In support of this innocence claim, the petition cites the opinions of three current or former Chief Medical Examiners and another forensic pathologist. One of these experts, Dr Joye Carter, is the former Chief Medical Examiner of Harris County in Texas who performed the autopsy of Melissa Trotter and testified at Larry Swearingen's trial. At the trial she had testified that in her opinion, Melissa Trotter's death had occurred 25 days before her body was found. In an affidavit signed in 2007, Dr Carter stated that she had looked again at the case and changed her opinion. She stated that she had reviewed the autopsy report and photographs and also "several pieces of forensically important information that, to the best of my recollection, were not made available to [me] during trial or pretrial proceedings. " This information included video footage of the crime scene taken on the day Melissa Trotter was found, medical records giving Melissa Trotter's weight
immediately prior to her disappearance, and the temperature data for the area in which she was found for the period 8 December 1998 to 2 January 1999.

In her affidavit, Dr Carter concluded that Melissa Trotter's body had been left in the forest within two weeks of it being found. If accurate, this would mean that the body was dumped at a time when Larry Swearingen was already in custody. Another forensic pathologist, and former Chief Medical Examiner for Nueces County, Texas, Dr Lloyd White, has given a written statement that he supports Dr Carter's conclusions based on her 2007 re-evaluation of the evidence. He also agrees with Dr Gerald Larkin, another forensic expert, who concluded that "Ms Trotter's body was exposed in the wood for several days only, and not for two or three weeks". Dr White states that there is strong support for the conclusion that the body was left in the woods "at least one week after Mr. Swearingen was incarcerated on December 11, 1998, and probably more than two weeks after".

The petition to the Supreme Court argues that the post-conviction expert evidence amounts to "uncontested forensic pathology showing that Mr. Swearingen could not possibly have been the person who killed the victim. The only way to convict would be for the jury to conclude that Mr. Swearingen had an accomplice who stored the body so it would not decompose and disposed of it later. That, however, is speculation so rank that the State has never even proposed it. Indeed, it collides with the State’s insistence at all stages of proceedings that no one but Mr. Swearingen killed the victim and threw her into the woods".

Larry Swearingen has repeatedly sought full DNA testing of crime scene evidence. According to the appeal before the US Supreme Court, "the DNA analysis that the State has conducted so far is compelling evidence that Mr. Swearingen is innocent. State examiners found male blood under the victim's fingernails. Testing excluded Mr. Swearingen as the donor." The petition also notes that at an evidentiary hearing in 2008, a co-worker of Melissa Trotter had testified that, only weeks before her disappearance, another man had "made serious threats to rape and strangle the victim".

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Texas continues to account for a large number of the USA's executions. Of the 1,138 people put to death nationwide since 1977 when executions resumed in the USA, 424 have been in Texas. There have been two executions in the USA so far this year: one in Texas, one in Alabama.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all cases, unconditionally. To end the death penalty is to abandon a destructive, diversionary and divisive public policy that is not consistent with widely held values. It not only runs the risk of irrevocable error, it is also costly, to the public purse as well as in social and psychological terms. It has not been proved to have a special deterrent effect. It tends to be applied in a discriminatory way, on grounds of race and class. It denies the possibility of reconciliation and rehabilitation. It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing explanations that could inform positive strategies. It prolongs the suffering of the murder victim’s family, and extends that suffering to the loved ones of the condemned prisoner. It diverts resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. It is a symptom of a culture of
violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity. It should be abolished.

Today, some 138 countries are abolitionist in law or practice. In 2007, the UN General Assembly called for a moratorium on executions worldwide and for retentionist countries to work towards abolition.

RECOMMENDED ACTION:

Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible (please include Larry Swearingen's prisoner number, #999361, in appeals):

- expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Melissa Trotter and explaining that you are not seeking to condone the manner of her death or to downplay the suffering caused;

- opposing the execution of Larry Swearingen;

- noting that several forensic experts, including the former Harris Country Chief Medical Examiner, who performed the autopsy of Melissa Trotter and testified at the trial, have provided expert opinion supportive of Larry Swearingen's claim of innocence;

- calling for Larry Swearingen's execution to be halted and his death sentence to be commuted;

- at a minimum calling on the Governor to stop the execution and allow full DNA testing to be conducted.

APPEALS TO:

Rissie L. Owens
Presiding Officer, Board of Pardons and Paroles
Executive Clemency Section
8610 Shoal Creek Boulevard
Austin, TX 78757
Fax: 1 512 467 0945
Salutation: Dear Ms. Owens

Governor Rick Perry
Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428
Fax: 1 512 463 1849
Salutation: Dear Governor

PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY
All appeals must arrive before 27 January, 2009

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Room for doubt
(Houston Chronicle © 01/23/2009)
Larry Ray Swearingen has lived on Texas death row for eight years, convicted of the rape-murder of a Montgomery County coed in 1998. He is scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Huntsville next Tuesday, despite the fact that a growing body of evidence indicates he could not have strangled 19-year-old Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in Sam Houston National Forest. With the inmate facing

[whisky 23]

Room for doubt


Houston Chronicle © 01/23/2009)
Larry Ray Swearingen has lived on Texas death row for eight years, convicted of the rape-murder of a Montgomery County coed in 1998. He is scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Huntsville next Tuesday, despite the fact that a growing body of evidence indicates he could not have strangled 19-year-old Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in Sam Houston National Forest. With the inmate facing

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TX: Swearingen - Governor Perry should halt the execution
Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:01AM
81.173.132.171


Room for doubt
Convicted murderer’s execution should be stayed pending reconsideration of evidence
Houston Chronicle
Jan. 22, 2009, 11:45PM

Story underneath

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With the inmate facing an irreversible sentence — capital punishment — it is imperative that Texas Gov. Rick Perry stay the execution to prevent the death of a possibly innocent man.

While plenty of circumstantial evidence indicated Swearingen, a convicted rapist, was a logical suspect, forensic facts not presented at his trial point elsewhere. Trotter’s body was discovered 10 years ago on Jan. 2, nearly a month after her disappearance from the Montgomery College campus in Conroe.

However, Swearingen was jailed on traffic warrants three days after the woman went missing. Although prosecutors theorized that Trotter was killed and her body dumped in the forest the day of her disappearance, the corpse was amazingly well preserved when discovered. Six physicians and forensic scientists who reviewed the evidence concluded that the victim died well after Swearingen’s arrest.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/6226203.html

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TX: Swearingen - Governor Perry should halt the execution
Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:01AM
81.173.132.171


<DIV class=message_text>Room for doubt
Convicted murderer’s execution should be stayed pending reconsideration of evidence
Houston Chronicle
Jan. 22, 2009, 11:45PM

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With the inmate facing an irreversible sentence — capital punishment — it is imperative that Texas Gov. Rick Perry stay the execution to prevent the death of a possibly innocent man.

While plenty of circumstantial evidence indicated Swearingen, a convicted rapist, was a logical suspect, forensic facts not presented at his trial point elsewhere. Trotter’s body was discovered 10 years ago on Jan. 2, nearly a month after her disappearance from the Montgomery College campus in Conroe.

However, Swearingen was jailed on traffic warrants three days after the woman went missing. Although prosecutors theorized that Trotter was killed and her body dumped in the forest the day of her disappearance, the corpse was amazingly well preserved when discovered. Six physicians and forensic scientists who reviewed the evidence concluded that the victim died well after Swearingen’s arrest.

Former Harris County Chief Medical Examiner Joye Carter, who testified against Swearingen in his trial, reexamined the physical evidence and has concluded that Trotter’s death occurred at least a week after Swearingen was taken into custody.

One expert, using a technique familiar to viewers of the CSI TV series, confirmed that finding by dating the development of insect larvae in the victim’s body.

Other exculpatory evidence included blood samples found under Trotter’s fingernails and a pubic hair recovered from a vaginal swab that came from someone other than Swearingen.

The strongest evidence linking the inmate to the murder was the fact he was seen with Trotter on campus the day she disappeared, and a torn stocking matching a piece used to strangle her was found at the man’s trailer. Oddly, the hose turned up after the trailer was twice searched by Montgomery County deputies. Lawmen did not disclose during the trial that Trotter had received phone threats from another man.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals correctly stayed Swearingen’s execution last year on the basis of the new evidence. It inexplicably later denied his appeal for a new trial without addressing the seeming impossibility of his involvement in the woman’s killing.

The inmate’s attorney, James Rytting, is currently working on a new appeal with the assistance of the New York-based Innocence Project. They are seeking DNA testing of the pantyhose and blood samples. Rytting told the Chronicle’s Lisa Falkenberg that despite the contradictions, prosecutors continue to spin far-fetched theories, such as the possibility that Swearingen had refrigerated Trotter’s body and then had an unknown accomplice dispose of it while he was jailed.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/6226203.html

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Stop the execution of Larry Swearingen in Texas!
Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:39AM
81.173.132.171


Subject: URGENT ACTION APPEAL


URGENT ACTION APPEAL - From Amnesty International USA

Stop the execution of Larry Swearingen in Texas!

Less than 5 days left to save an innocent man's life. Larry is scheduled to be executed on January 27, 2009 for a murder he did not commit!!
Please take action and send appeals via Fax or e-mail to the Board of Pardons and Paroles and to the Governor's Office.

The pdf version is here:
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa01709.pdf

And the online action is here:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx &action=11618

Please pass on this information, spread this far and widely. Check for daily updates at www.larry-swearingen.com or join Larry's YAHOO group http://******************/group/larry_swearingen/.

Thanks so much for all your help and support!!

In struggle,

Erwann Doulin & Wiebke Swearingen

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TX: Larry Swearingen - Clock ticking for execution
Fri Jan 23, 2009 1:40PM
81.173.132.171


Clock ticking for execution of a possibly innocent man

9:59 AM Fri, Jan 23, 2009

I really don't know if Larry Swearingen is guilty of the crime he is accused of. But a key peice of evidence is in question by one of the people who presented it at trial, the medical examiner who testified in the case. It seems the murder victim's body had been dumped int he woods days, maybe weeks, after the alleged murderer was already in jail. How is that possible? So far, it seems legal manuevering has prevented anyone from seriously considering that question.

A good explanation of the case appears in this month's Texas Monthly, and the latest developments are explained here, in a column from the Houston Chronicle. It's not the sort of reading that will inspire confidence in the legal system.



Mtn for Order.App 1 Ex C.pdf
http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/Mtn%20for%20Order.App%201%20Ex%20C.pdf

How can a body weigh more after weeks in a forest than it did a week before the time of death? I'm no CSI, but that seems impossible to me. And if we care about justice in this state, we should demand that that question be answered before this man is put to death.

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/clock-ticking-f.html

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TX: Four pathologists back Swearingen's innocence claim
Sat Jan 24, 2009 2:32AM
81.173.132.171


Four pathologists back death row inmate's innocence claim
Swearingen, slated to die Tuesday in college student's 1998 murder, was in jail at time, 4 now say.

By Chuck Lindell
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Saturday, January 24, 2009

Four forensic pathologists agree that Larry Swearingen, set to be executed Tuesday, could not have committed the 1998 murder that sent him to death row.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen's guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter's curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old's body was left behind, the pathologists say.

"It's just scientifically impossible for him to have killed the girl and thrown her into the woods," said James Rytting, Swearingen's appellate lawyer. "It's guilt by imagination."

Source: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/local/01/24/0124swearingen.html

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Texas set to execute defendant who was in jail at the time
Sat Jan 24, 2009 5:33PM
81.173.132.171


Saturday, January 24, 2009
Texas set to execute defendant who was in jail at the time of the crime

DNA may have identified another innocent man convicted and sentenced to Texas death row, says a Houston Chronicle editorial ("Room for Doubt," Jan. 23), but he'll die on Tuesday unless Governor Perry stays the execution:


Larry Ray Swearingen has lived on Texas death row for eight years, convicted of the rape-murder of a Montgomery County coed in 1998. He is scheduled for execution by lethal injection in Huntsville next Tuesday, despite the fact that a growing body of evidence indicates he could not have strangled 19-year-old Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in Sam Houston National Forest. ...

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2009/01/texas-set-to-execute-defendant-who-was.html

[whisky 23]

There is so much doubt here that this guy could well be innocent.
If Texas goes ahead they could well be killing a innocent man.
I really hope that Larry is given a stay before it is to late

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Four pathologists back death row inmate's innocence claim
Swearingen, slated to die Tuesday in college student's 1998 murder, was in jail at time, 4 now say.
By Chuck Lindell

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF


Saturday, January 24, 2009

Four forensic pathologists agree that Larry Swearingen, set to be executed Tuesday, could not have committed the 1998 murder that sent him to death row.

The four include the medical examiner whose testimony helped secure Swearingen's guilty verdict. That medical examiner now says college student Melissa Trotter's curiously preserved body could not have lain in the East Texas woods for more than 14 days — and probably was there for a much shorter time.

The results mean Swearingen was in jail when the 19-year-old's body was left behind, the pathologists say.

"It's just scientifically impossible for him to have killed the girl and thrown her into the woods," said James Rytting, Swearingen's appellate lawyer. "It's guilt by imagination."

Prosecutors disagree, saying compelling evidence ties Swearingen to the crime, including a match between the panty hose leg found around Trotter's neck and the stocking remnant found in a trash dump next to Swearingen's mobile home. Also, hair and fibers show Trotter had been in Swearingen's truck and mobile home in Willis, about 40 miles north of Houston.

But in court briefs seeking to keep Swearingen's execution on track, prosecutors do not attack the conclusions by the four pathologists beyond labeling them "opinion evidence based on experts' second-hand review of others' work and photographs."

One of those pathologists, however, did Trotter's autopsy.

In her original report, Dr. Joye Carter determined that Trotter's strangled body had lain in the Sam Houston National Forest outside Conroe for 25 days — coinciding exactly with the date of Trotter's disappearance from Montgomery County Community College, Dec. 8, 1998. Witnesses said Trotter left the campus library that day with Swearingen, whom she met two days earlier.

The timing was important because Swearingen had been in jail since Dec. 11 on outstanding traffic warrants.

But faced with conclusions from other pathologists that her 25-day time of death defied scientific analysis and common sense, Carter recanted her findings in a 2007 affidavit. "Ms. Trotter's body was left in the woods within two weeks of the date of discovery" on Jan. 2, 1999, she wrote.

Reassessment of Trotter's autopsy began late in Swearingen's appeals process when a defense pathologist noticed that Carter found an intact spleen and pancreas.

Both organs liquefy quickly after death, prompting a more thorough review:

• Five recently discovered slides of heart, lung and nerve tissue from Trotter's autopsy revealed intact nuclei and red blood cells, said Dr. Lloyd White, Tarrant County deputy medical examiner.

Red blood cells break down within hours, and nuclei in heart cells break down within days, White said.

Also, levels of bacteria indicated the body had not been frozen or preserved, he said.

White's conclusion: Trotter had been dead for two or three days before her discovery.

• Trotter's mucosa — fragile tissue in the stomach and intestines that quickly disintegrates after death — was intact, noted Dr. Glenn Larkin, a North Carolina pathologist.

The condition of the mucosa indicates with "medical certainty" that Trotter had been in the forest for less than 10 days and more likely three or four days, Larkin concluded.

• Trotter weighed 109 pounds at a doctor's visit shortly before she disappeared, but her body weighed 105 pounds, a 4 percent decline. Larkin concluded that a body will lose up to 90 percent of its weight in less than 25 days under temperatures endured by Trotter's body: average highs of 62 and lows of around 40.

• Unlike a body left outside for 25 days, Trotter's showed no sign of bloating or perforated intestines. Her clothes were unsoiled and slipped easily from her body during the autopsy. There was limited scavenging by animals in a forest inhabited by feral pigs, vultures and raccoons.

"The following forensic conclusion is therefore not reasonably debatable amongst competent forensic pathologists: Without question, Mr. Swearingen was not the person who left Ms. Trotter's body in the Sam Houston National Forest," Larkin said in an affidavit.

Thus far, only the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has seen the opinions from the four forensic pathologists.

The state's highest criminal court, however, did not rule or comment on the information. Instead, the court dismissed Swearingen's petition for violating state laws that limit death row inmates to one petition for a writ of habeas corpus unless lawyers uncover information that was not available when the first appeal was filed.

The appeals court has yet to rule on a stay of execution motion that repeats the forensic conclusions.

The opinions from the forensic pathologists also were included in a plea to Gov. Rick Perry to issue a 30-day execution reprieve.

Swearingen also has two federal petitions pending based on the forensic information. He is asking the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to bring the findings to a U.S. District Court for review, and he is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has opposed both requests, saying Swearingen has not met federal requirements to pursue an innocence claim and is, in fact, not innocent.

Swearingen has presented no new DNA or indisputable evidence undermining his conviction, only expert opinion that could be challenged under cross-examination if presented at trial, Abbott said in briefs.

In addition, Abbott said, the prosecution's case against Swearingen was convincing: He was the last person seen with Trotter, whose autopsied stomach contained potatoes, which she ate for lunch the day she disappeared. The panty hose link Swearingen to the crime, and Swearingen wrote a letter from jail — in Spanish to divert police attention to another man — that presented a plausible narrative for the killing.

Swearingen's lawyer, joined by the Innocence Project in New York, says he believes he has met the legal definition for an innocence claim: that it is unlikely a reasonable juror would convict him in light of the new evidence.

"Someone else had that girl's body, dead or alive, and threw her in the forest. And that someone wasn't Larry," Rytting said.

Swearingen would be the fourth Texan executed this year.

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TX: OPEN LETTER TO MR. GREGG ABBOTT - Swearingen
Sun Jan 25, 2009 9:01AM
81.173.132.171


January 25, 2009
OPEN LETTER TO MR. GREGG ABBOTT
Attorney General of Texas

Re: Your statements in "Four pathologists back death row inmate's innocence claim", Austin American-Statesman, published Jan. 24, 2009


Gregg Abbott:

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has opposed both requests, saying Swearingen has not met federal requirements to pursue an innocence claim and is, in fact, not innocent.

COMMENT: THE EVIDENCE THAT SWEARINGEN PROPOSES IS PHYSICAL REALITY; PHYSICS TRUMPS EVERYTHING ELSE.

Swearingen has presented no new DNA or indisputable evidence undermining his conviction, only expert opinion that could be challenged under cross-examination if presented at trial, Abbott said in briefs.

COMMENT: SWEARINGEN WANTS TO PRESENT NEW DNA EVIDENCE THAT IS BOTH MATERIAL AND RELEVANT; WE WANT TO BE CROSS-EXAMINED AND WE WILL RESIST IMPEACHMENT.

In addition, Abbott said, the prosecution's case against Swearingen was convincing: He was the last person seen with Trotter, whose autopsied stomach contained potatoes, which she ate for lunch the day she disappeared.

COMMENT: SWEARINGEN CONFIRMS THAT HE SAW TROTTER THAT DAY; HE LEFT HER HOWEVER ALIVE. THE STATE ASSUMES THAT SWEARINGEN KILLED HER BECAUSE HE SAW HER; HOWEVER SO DID HER KILLER.

The panty hose link Swearingen to the crime,

COMMENT: ON DEC. 11, 1998 SWEARINGEN WAS ARRESTED IN THE FRONT YARD OF HIS PARENTS ON THE PRETEX OF HAVING OUTSTANDING TRAFFIC WARRANTS. ON THE 15TH THE FIRST SEARCH WARRANT IS EXECUTED ON HIS HOME. ON THE 18TH ANOTHER SEARCH WARRANT IS EXECUTED IN HIS HOME, AND ANOTHER ON HIS PARENTS HOME. DURING THESE TWO SEARCHES ON HIS HOME, AT LEAST A DOZEN OFFICERS WAS IN THAT HOME AND THESE PANTYHOSE WAS NOT FOUND. IF SEEN A PAIR OF PANTYHOSE MISSING ONE LEG IT WOULD STICK OUT TO YOU DURING THE SEARCH, WOULDN'T IT?

ON JANUARY 4, 1999, TWO DAYS AFTER THE BODY HAD BEEN FOUND DETECTIVE LEO MOCK DECIDED TO TRAVEL TO SWEARINGEN'S HOME, WITHOUT WARRANT, AND WHOM WAS NOT A DETECTIVE WORKING ON THIS CASE, JUST TO "SEE IF ANYONE" STILL LIVED THERE. BY THIS TIME SWEARINGEN WAS ARRESTED AND HIS EX-WIFE HAD MOVED, BUT MOCK FOUND THESE PANTYHOSE IN THE TRASH.

YOU DON'T FIND ANYTHING IN THE FIRST TWO SEARCHES WITH A DOZEN OFFICERS, YET ONE LOAN DETECTIVE WITHOUT A WARRANT CHECKING A RESIDENCE TO SEE IF ANYONE STILL LIVES THERE "FINDS" IT?? ODD...

and Swearingen wrote a letter from jail — in Spanish to divert police attention to another man.

COMMENT: THE SO-CALLED 'SPANISH LETTER' WAS IN UNCIPHERABLE SPANISH, SO BAD THAT THE STATE'S OFFICIAL TRANSLATER COULD NOT MAKE HEAD OR TAILS OF IT, AND CONTAINED NO INFORMATION THAT WEREN'T MADE AVAILABLE TO SWEARINGEN DUE TO THE QUESTIONING AND CONFRONTATION WITH THE FACTS OF THIS CASE AT HIS ARREST; SUCH AS -- TO GIVE ONLY ONE EXAMPLE -- SHOWING SWEARINGEN THE AUTOPSY PHOTOS. EVERYONE -- WHO IS NOT BLIND -- CAN SEE THAT THE VICTIM WORE RED PANTIES.

Swearingen's lawyer, joined by the Innocence Project in New York, says he believes he has met the legal definition for an innocence claim: that it is unlikely a reasonable juror would convict him in light of the new evidence.

COMMENT: THE WORST POSSIBLE SLANT FOR SWEARINGEN WOULD BE THAT REASONABLE DOUBT WOULD FORCE IN ACQUITTAL.

MR. ABBOTT, IF YOU WERE HONEST, YOU TOO WOULD KNOW THAT LARRY WAS INNOCENT.

SINCERELY,
THE LARRY SWEARINGEN SUPPORT GROUP
ON BEHALF OF LARRY SWEARINGEN AND HIS FAMILY

---
check out the news on Larry's case at http://www.larry-swearingen.com

[BLoved]

He has a stay: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6230902.html

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brilliant news

[whisky 23]

He has a stay: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6230902.html

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What for wonderful News

[soymaple]

Originally Posted by sunnflower

What for wonderful News

I agree.

Keep us updated!

[missiva]

Ohhhhhhh good news from death row at least!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope this time they put an end on this proving his innocence and releasing him.

[DaveMoff]

What an incredible relief! Big sigh here. This case is far from over, but with any luck Mr. Swearingen now will have the opportunity to present evidence supporting his innocence in an open court. Given the type and amount of evidence here, I cannot imagine that his conviction will stand.

[Stray]

Fantastic news!

[JJS811]

Excellent news.

[JJS811]

Excellent news.