One of the lessons of the Goudge Inquiry was the ease with which innocent persons could be convicted of murder strictly on the basis of the pathological evidence on questions such as the time and cause of death - which all too often was wrong.
Many Canadians reacted in horror to the spectre of innocent parents put through the horror of being charged with murdering their own children because of faulty pathological evidence.
That sense of horror is compounded where there is the possibility that an innocent person is being executed by the state in circumstances where there are strong suggestions that the pathologists got it wrong.
The Larry Swearingen case is very much in point;
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"SOMETIMES I'D WALK INTO A CLUB WITH MY FRIENDS OR WITH MY WIFE OR WHATEVER, AND FIND THE BIGGEST GUY AND PUNCH HIM IN THE MOUTH. ASK HIM, 'DO YOU WANT TO GO OUTSIDE?' AND IT'S NOT BECAUSE I'M A BILLY BAD-ASS, OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. IT'S JUST USING THEM LIKE THAT. IT MAKES YOU FEEL YOU'RE INVINCIBLE, THAT YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT TO DO. THAT'S PROBABLY THE WORST MISTAKE I EVER MADE IN MY LIFE."
lARRY SWEARINGEN TO COURT TV;
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CourtTVnews.com reporter Emanuella Grinberg interviewed Texas death row inmate Larry Swearingen on Jan. 10 at the Polunsky Prison Unit in Livingston, Texas. Late Tuesday, Swearingen won a reprieve from his scheduled Wednesday execution. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. The video was produced by Mark Grieco.
COURTTVNEWS.COM: Can you describe a typical day on death row for you?
LARRY SWEARINGEN: Typical day? I sleep a lot. I work on my case, write the attorneys. Try to get people to help me, and I work, that's it.
CTV: What do you do to pass the time?
SWEARINGEN: Read or draw.
CTV: Do you get mail from strangers or admirers?
SWEARINGEN: Admirers? Well, I'm not going to say no, but I don't respond to them as far as that. This is not something I'm proud of. This is not something that should be glorified. People have groupies or whatever, but I just don't want them. It's not me. I write about four people that I write.
CTV: Who are they?
SWEARINGEN: My family and my wife and I have one good friend who's in Australia. That's about it. I just don't have groupies.
CTV: What are some things you miss about life on the outside?
SWEARINGEN: My kids. That's it. My kids. Everything else is irrelevant; I miss my kids, my son, my daughter, that's what I miss the most.
CTV: How is your relationship with your children?
SWEARINGEN: As good as it can be expected, I guess. It's not the perfect relationship, but they come up here, we write and we do the best we can. I stay in touch with their teachers. I still get their report cards. I try to stay as active as anyone can in this situation to be in their kids' lives.
CTV: Where did you grow up?
SWEARINGEN: I was an Army brat till the age of 10, moved around a lot, so my real dad passed away. In '81, my mom married my stepdad, so we still moved around. So it wasn't one specific place.
CTV: What was it like growing up without a father?
SWEARINGEN: I had a father. This isn't a stepchild horror story. My stepdad is my dad. He was my best friend and biggest supporter. I've had many arguments about that. God blessed me with two dads. It wasn't just one. You always hear the stepdad or stepmom horror stories, and it wasn't like that. He was my best friend and biggest supporter. I didn't grow up without a dad. I had a dad.
CTV: Can you recall when you were the happiest?
SWEARINGEN: There's not just one specific thing that I could say would outrank one or the other. My son, watching him being born, and my daughter, watch[ing] her being born, those are probably the two happiest memories you can get. I don't know if you have kids, but it's, that's mine, that's something you can never change.
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CTV: Is there any particular moment in your life that you consider a turning point?
SWEARINGEN: There's really not a changing point. I made mistakes in my life, and for any man or woman to sit and say they are without fault or never made mistakes, they're liars. I've made mistakes and I'm the first to tell you, I've made a mistake, I've made several mistakes.
I guess the changing point in my life was when I started using steroids. You hear these sports players talking about it doesn't do nothing. They're liars. One, it makes you lose your hair. It gives you a temper, things like that. Looking back at it now and that I don't have any of it in my system, I'm surprised my family still talks to me. I had a horrible attitude.
Sometimes I'd walk into a club with my friends or with my wife or whatever, and find the biggest guy and punch him in the mouth. Ask him, "Do you want to go outside?" And it's not because I'm a Billy Bad-Ass, or anything like that. It's just using them like that. It makes you feel you're invincible, that you can do what you want to do. That's probably the worst mistake I ever made in
my life.
CTV: You knew the victim in the case? What attracted you to her?
SWEARINGEN: It wasn't an attraction. We were friends. It wasn't a sexual thing and people don't understand that. It wasn't, we weren't screwing each other. I'm trying to be polite. It wasn't like that. We just run around together. It was fun. My ex-wife was older than me, where we didn't do a lot of things together. Doesn't say that I didn't love her because I did, but we just didn't do a lot of things, whereas Melissa was younger than me. We went to the beach. We went and played putt-putt golf or whatever. It was just something we run around and did. It wasn't, it wasn't getting in each other's pants. It wasn't that kind of friendship.
CTV: What was she like?
SWEARINGEN: She was full of piss and vinegar. She was just outgoing. She liked animals. She liked to read. We went to the beach. I didn't know her well enough to say she was this or that. She'd call, say, "Hey, what are you doing?" We'd go do this ... It wasn't an everyday thing. It just wasn't an everyday thing. She was a nice girl. I don't know how to explain it. She was just a nice friend.
CTV: So you didn't kill her?
SWEARINGEN: No. The DNA under the fingernails is not mine. They found pubic hairs, they said that I raped her, but the pubic hairs aren't mine. They alleged all this stuff, but it's not mine. It's as simple as that. The blood is male, but it's not mine. Whatever happens happens. There's nothing I can do about. All I can do hope that the attorneys are diligent enough to get things done. If not, then I'm in a world of shit. You can smile, it's not that bad.
CTV: Why have you continued to press your appeals?
SWEARINGEN: Why? Well, I could have took a plea bargain and had a chance of going home, but I'm not going to plead guilty to something I didn't do. There comes a time where everybody has to stand their ground and accept what comes if you stand your ground.
I'm not going to plead guilty to murder for something I didn't do. I may steal your car, I may cheat on you, I may do all these other things, but killing somebody is not it. That's not, this is not me. I'm not going to say I don't have a temper, because I did. I'm the first one to tell you I'd fight with a fencepost if I thought I could win. But it's one of them things where my past leads to the wrong conclusions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CTV: Was there one thing that you or someone could have done in your young life to prevent you from being here?
SWEARINGEN: Yeah, probably whooped my ass when they found out I was having sex. If my son wouldn't have come about, I'd probably been in college and things may have been different. But like I said, you got to take responsibility for your own past. Nobody forced me to do things. I made my own decisions. Right around 13 or 14, I was doing what I wanted to do and didn't care what anybody else said.
You just have to, have to accept what happened, you know. There were things in my past that I could have used for mitigating evidence. I'm not, I'm not using it as a crutch. It happened. There's nothing I can do about it. But I'm not going to use it as a crutch.
CTV: Can you give an example?
SWEARINGEN: I was abused by a relative, let's leave it at that. It's things that a guy just does not want to talk about. You know, it happened, there's nothing I can do about it. I found out later that it happened to that person as well by a family member. For lack of a better word, the chain has been broken. My son will never have to deal with that. The only thing he's got to worry about is my mom not tearing the hide in his ass. He's a good kid, he's adjusted well and made the honor roll. He looks like me, but he's not like me and I'm glad for that.
CTV: How are you different?
SWEARINGEN: I like country, he likes rock. Where I like sports, he doesn't. He's a pain in the butt. No, he's my boy. He's 6-foot-1, with a size 13 foot. He's 16.
CTV: What is your biggest regret?
SWEARINGEN: Not being a better parent. That's my biggest regret, not being a better parent. I brought two beautiful children in this world, and I'm sitting here and somebody else is raising them. And that's not the way I was raised. My dad and mom — I say my dad, both my dads — raised me better than that. So not being a better parent, not being a better brother, uncle, things like that.
CTV: Did you write some of your appeals?
SWEARINGEN: I wrote some of it, yes. I asked for DNA testing on an officer who claims he cut himself shaving that morning, and the blood floated through the air and landed on her fingernails. I filed some for DNA testing on the officer and the district attorney and all these people that claimed that blood floated through the air and landed on the body and under the fingernails and things like that.
CTV: Why did you decide to do it rather than finding an attorney?
SWEARINGEN: An attorney wouldn't help me. You're put in a position where Texas attorneys for the most part are worried about their money and not about anything else. So if you want things done, you do it yourself. Simple as that. I tried, I failed, I went all the way to the Supreme Court with it. They put it on docket to review it and ultimately decided I didn't have, I guess, a good enough argument. I'm not an attorney. I made the best I could do with what
I have.
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CTV: Do you think life in prison without parole would be harder than a death sentence?
SWEARINGEN: I wasn't going to accept a plea bargain. It wasn't for me. It's not an option. I'm not going to sit in prison and watch my family and friends die off, and me sitting back here for something I didn't do. If giving my life means to stand my ground, then so be it. I'll give it. Simple as that. I'm not going to plead guilty or accept a plea bargain to save my life only to ... it's a torture.
Prison life is not easy. This is a different society in here. People that sit on juries think, well, this is easy or whatever, and it's not. You do the best you can, but there are times that you have to do things you wouldn't normally do out there.
CTV: Can you give me an example?
SWEARINGEN: No.
CTV: Sure?
SWEARINGEN: Very sure.
CTV: Do you expect any family or friends to be at your execution, if it goes through?
SWEARINGEN: I'm not going to let them be there. This isn't a party I'm going to. It's not where I'm going to go and order snacks and invite guests. I'm going there to be murdered. Simple as that. I'm going there, if that's what it comes to, get it over with.
CTV: Are you religious?
SWEARINGEN: Am I religious, eh? It depends on what you call religious. Do I believe in God? Yes. Do I have a religion? No. Religion is why we're at war. If you think about it, if you just knock all the crap off of it, we all believe in the same god. It doesn't matter, it doesn't say in the Bible that if you're Catholic, you reach St. Peter's gate before a Protestant. It doesn't say if you're Muslim, you're better than anybody else. We all have a god, whether it's Jesus or, what is it for Muslims, Muhammad, or whatever. We all have the same god.
CTV: What do you think will happen to you after you die?
SWEARINGEN: I'm going to be planted in the ground. That's what going to happen. No, I'm going to be cremated.
CTV: Do you believe in an afterlife?
SWEARINGEN: You know what, I've never given any thought about that. You know, if I do, I want to come back as a dog.
CTV: Why? What kind?
SWEARINGEN: A big dog. I want to be like a Saint Bernard, where I can drool on people and that way I can hump your leg if you don't like it or something. I've never given any thought about it, really. I've decided I'm going to be cremated, going to have my ashes spread on both my dads' graves and be done with it. It's cheaper and I ain't going to put my family through the financial burden and all that other crap.
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CTV: Are you afraid to die?
SWEARINGEN: Am I afraid to die? No, it goes back to the beginning. I could've took a plea bargain, but once you make that decision, you have to stick by that decision. You have to stick by the decision that you make. There's no going back. There's no saying, "Hey, look, I changed my mind." It just doesn't work like that. One of them things.
CTV: Is there anything you want people to know about you that they may not know?
SWEARINGEN: Yeah, I'm a hemorrhoid; I'll just grow on you after a while. It's one of them things, if you sit and look at my case with common sense, you'll know it's full of crap. You can either like me or hate me and it doesn't make any difference. Give me a chance, you'll learn to like me. You'll see I'm not the person Texas would portray me as. But I'm not the only one here either. There are several people. If you look at their cases and especially with the Houston crime lab, one guy was released over the ballistics and another guy is fixing to be killed by same person. So they sort of pick and choose their cases.
If you look back, look back at the case of O.J. Simpson. He had the money to hire a team. It's not whether he's guilty or innocent. Robert Blake had the money to hire his team. Michael Jackson had the money to hire his team. Kobe Bryant had the money to hire his team. Scott Peterson didn't hire a team — see where he's sitting. There's more evidence against O.J. Simpson than there was against that man.
It all comes down to who's going to take and put the best argument together. So long as the state has to pay for your experts, you're not going to get a competent person that's going to argue for you.
CTV: Have you thought about what your last words might be?
SWEARINGEN: There's not going to be any last words. I'm going to go in there and push the button. Let's get it over with. There's not going to be any last words and there's not going to be any witnesses. Like I said, it's not a party and for somebody to come up here thinking, "Oh, I'm going to get closure in this," you're wrong. Death is death. There's no coming back from it. If you've ever seen the face of death, you'll never forget it. I've worked with the fire department. I did things and I've seen death. There's still things I remember.
CTV: Are you afraid of death?
SWEARINGEN: No, I was exposed to it early on in my life with my dad dying, then my horse died, and then my dog died after that. They say things come in threes.
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
