"...but execution still set for Wednesday"

[Mike 03]

Did faulty science, and bad testimony, bring Larry Swearingen to the brink of execution?

Texas lab now admits its experts overstated key findings in murder trial, but execution still set for Wednesday

Shortly after 19-year-old Melissa Trotter disappeared from the campus of Montgomery College, north of Houston, the police suspected Larry Swearingen, a 27-year-old electrician, had killed her. They even tossed him in jail on traffic charges three days after Trotter vanished. Her body wasn’t discovered for another three weeks, in January 1999, in Sam Houston National Forest. She had been strangled with one leg of pantyhose.

Though Montgomery County, Tex., sheriff’s deputies searched Swearingen’s trailer twice, it wasn’t until after Trotter’s body was found that a landlord discovered another leg of pantyhose in Swearingen’s residence. A lab technician from the Texas Department of Public Safety testified that it was “a unique physical match” to the hose wrapped around Trotter’s neck, “to the exclusion of all other pantyhose.” At trial, the Montgomery prosecutor told the jury that the hose was “really, the smoking gun, if you would, the irrefutable evidence … The smoking gun, folks.”

Except, perhaps, it wasn’t.

More at link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/08/17/did-faulty-science-bad-testimony-bring-larry-swearingen-brink-execution/?noredirect=on

[abqtommy]

1. Freedom and justice for all

is just another US failure.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. I seem to recall there was a Supreme Court decision

a few years ago that essentially said that even if new evidence completely exonerated a death row inmate, he still wasn't necessarily entitled to a new trial.

[Ms. Toad]

3. Justice Scalia

"mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached."

[magicarpet]

5. Kill him,...

God will sort things out later.

If his is innocent,... God will reincarnate him and give him another chance.

[gratuitous]

4. As I recall, it had to do with strict court deadlines

My reading of the opinion was "If the prosecutor successfully conceals his cheating the system such that a defendant can't find out he was railroaded until after the deadline, the defendant is fucked." It seemed to create an incentive for prosecutors to hide exculpatory evidence from the defense so that they could win a conviction with as little trouble as possible, and by continuing to cover up evidence, they'd outlast the appeals process.