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Lisa Falkenberg on Swearingen Case

By standdown

The Houston Chronicle columnist's latest is, "Innocent plea needs court hearing."  Here's an extended excerpt of this must-read commentary:If evidence shows Larry Ray Swearingen is innocent, but there?s no court that will hear it, does actual innocence even matter? That seems to be the question posed Monday by one lone judge, Jacques L. Wiener Jr., on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. A three-judge panel granted Swearingen a stay of execution one day before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection for the 1998 murder of 19-year-old Montgomery College student Melissa Trotter. Swearingen, an electrician from Willis with a prior rape conviction, was convicted in 2000 based on circumstantial evidence. Swearingen maintained his innocence from the beginning and his appellate attorneys have filed numerous appeals based on forensic evidence that suggests Swearingen was actually locked up in jail on an unrelated charge when Trotter?s lifeless body was dumped in the Sam Houston National Forest...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on January 27, 2009 (boomark / email).