"The timing of Ms. Trotter’s death was not a major issue during his trial in 2000. Mr. Swearingen’s lawyers focused on avoiding the death penalty by disproving the state’s theories that he had also raped and kidnapped her. When appellate lawyers took over the case, they began to question the condition of Ms. Trotter’s body. Crime scene video showed a corpse that was fairly well preserved with the exception of the head and neck, where decomposition and insect activity were evident. Her clothes were remarkably clean. And although it was late fall, few leaves had dropped onto her body.
Initially, defense lawyers focused on the development of insect larvae on the body. One scientist who evaluated the bugs estimated that the body had been placed in the woods in mid-December, about a week after Mr. Swearingen was put behind bars. Theories about the insects, though, were discarded when it was discovered that specimens were gathered and stored incorrectly.
But scientists who had examined the entomological evidence noticed something else troubling about the autopsy report: Ms. Trotter’s organs were heavy and intact. Human bodies decay quickly after death; organs liquefy and disintegrate within days. In a January 2007 affidavit, Dr. James Arends, an entomologist, wrote that the autopsy report indicated Ms. Trotter died after Dec. 11 — the day Mr. Swearingen was jailed.
Defense lawyers asked at least seven doctors, including Dr. Carter, the medical examiner who conducted the initial autopsy, to examine the videos, photographs, organ tissue and microscopic evidence from Ms. Trotter’s body. Each one determined that she died while Mr. Swearingen was behind bars.
“Everything adds up to an individual who certainly has not been dead” for more than three weeks, said Dr. Lloyd White, the Tarrant County deputy medical examiner. “That’s just not possible.”
Mr. Swearingen’s lawyer, James Rytting, said the state’s circumstantial evidence paled when stacked against the mounds of scientific data. “We’re talking about a setup in this case,” Mr. Rytting said."
REPORTER BRANDI GRISSOM; TEXAS TRIBUNE; PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES;
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BACKGROUND: Larry Swearingen was sentenced to death in 2000 for the murder of Melissa Trotter in 1998. 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. He maintains his innocence of the murder. Several forensic experts have provided statements and testimony that support his claim. One of these experts, Dr Joyce 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 that in her opinion, Melissa Trotter had died 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 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.
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CONROE — "Sandy and Charles Trotter already suspected the worst," the Texas Tribune story by reporter Brandi Grissom published earlier today in the New York Times begins, under the heading, "In Death Row Case, Scientific Data May Finally Get Its Day in Court."
"For 25 days, dozens of police officers, friends and family in slickers and rubber boots had tromped through the damp Piney Woods around Lake Conroe searching for any sign of their 19-year-old daughter, Melissa," the story continues.
"Hundreds of fliers were strewn across the suburbs north of Houston. On Christmas Day, Mrs. Trotter had appeared on the local news pleading for anyone with information about their daughter to come forward. Nothing."
"Then, on Jan. 2, 1999, hunters in the Sam Houston National Forest happened on a nightmarish scene: a petite woman’s corpse splayed on a mat of leaves, twigs and pine needles, her face badly decomposed, her chest exposed, a green sweater shoved up to her neck, a stark white sock on a foot that had worn the tennis shoe lying next to the body. Her fingernails were still decorated in green and red polish for the holidays. The leg of a pair of pantyhose was knotted around her throat.
For the Trotters, the news was devastating. “Her theme when she was a leader of the Rainbow Girls was the Serenity Prayer and ‘love thy neighbor,’ ” Mrs. Trotter said. “So that was kind of a tough deal.”
Larry Swearingen, an inmate at the Montgomery County Jail and the prime suspect in Melissa Trotter’s disappearance, did not take the news well either. “She was my friend,” he said.
Ms. Trotter had disappeared from Montgomery Community College on Dec. 8, 1998. Mr. Swearingen was among the last people to see her alive. Police arrested him on unrelated outstanding warrants three days after she went missing and immediately fingered him as the culprit. Evidence on her body and a pile of circumstantial evidence implicated Mr. Swearingen. A jury convicted him of kidnapping, raping and killing the teenager and sentenced him to death in 2000.
Since his conviction, though, at least 10 different reports from more than a half-dozen scientists have concluded that Ms. Trotter’s body tells a different story. Their examinations of her internal organs show that she was killed while Mr. Swearingen was behind bars. The inmate’s lawyers have pleaded with courts for years to review the science. So far, those efforts have failed. But after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last week issued a third stay of execution, Mr. Swearingen, a former electrician and father of five, and his lawyers hope they will get to present their evidence in court and exonerate him.
“I don’t want to die, not in here,” Mr. Swearingen, 40, said during a recent interview on death row. “I don’t want to be a pin cushion for the state.”
Mr. Swearingen, who has a criminal history, does not deny that he knew Ms. Trotter or that he saw her on Dec. 8. But almost immediately after his arrest, he started behaving as if he had something to hide. He asked a friend to lie and say she had been with him that day. And Mr. Swearingen wrote a barely intelligible anonymous letter in Spanish, a language he did not know, with details about the crime scene, trying to redirect investigators’ attention to someone who was Hispanic. “Only the guilty lie and connive to do things like that,” Mr. Trotter said.
The state found much more circumstantial evidence that implicated Mr. Swearingen. His parents’ neighbors found shreds of paper in the street that turned out to be Ms. Trotter’s class schedule and insurance documents. Mr. Swearingen’s landlord said he had found half a pair of pantyhose at his trailer that matched the half tied around Ms. Trotter’s neck.
Police found two of her hairs, which had been yanked from her head, inside Mr. Swearingen’s truck. State experts testified in court that fibers on Ms. Trotter’s body and clothes matched those from Mr. Swearingen’s jacket, truck and bedroom. The police also found cigarette butts at Mr. Swearingen’s trailer that matched the brand Ms. Trotter smoked.
Mr. Swearingen's stay of execution.
At trial, Montgomery County prosecutors told jurors that Mr. Swearingen had been angry with Ms. Trotter because she had stood him up for a lunch date. They said he kidnapped her, took her back to his trailer, raped her, strangled her and dumped her body in the woods. “I think the evidence was his undoing,” said Mike Tiffin, the assistant district attorney who led the prosecution.
Accusations of a Setup
Mr. Swearingen, who has maintained his innocence from the start, insisted that Ms. Trotter was alive when they parted on the community college campus.
“The district attorney took evidence of a friendship and turned it into a murder,” he said.
The timing of Ms. Trotter’s death was not a major issue during his trial in 2000. Mr. Swearingen’s lawyers focused on avoiding the death penalty by disproving the state’s theories that he had also raped and kidnapped her. When appellate lawyers took over the case, they began to question the condition of Ms. Trotter’s body. Crime scene video showed a corpse that was fairly well preserved with the exception of the head and neck, where decomposition and insect activity were evident. Her clothes were remarkably clean. And although it was late fall, few leaves had dropped onto her body.
Initially, defense lawyers focused on the development of insect larvae on the body. One scientist who evaluated the bugs estimated that the body had been placed in the woods in mid-December, about a week after Mr. Swearingen was put behind bars. Theories about the insects, though, were discarded when it was discovered that specimens were gathered and stored incorrectly.
But scientists who had examined the entomological evidence noticed something else troubling about the autopsy report: Ms. Trotter’s organs were heavy and intact. Human bodies decay quickly after death; organs liquefy and disintegrate within days. In a January 2007 affidavit, Dr. James Arends, an entomologist, wrote that the autopsy report indicated Ms. Trotter died after Dec. 11 — the day Mr. Swearingen was jailed.
Defense lawyers asked at least seven doctors, including Dr. Carter, the medical examiner who conducted the initial autopsy, to examine the videos, photographs, organ tissue and microscopic evidence from Ms. Trotter’s body. Each one determined that she died while Mr. Swearingen was behind bars.
“Everything adds up to an individual who certainly has not been dead” for more than three weeks, said Dr. Lloyd White, the Tarrant County deputy medical examiner. “That’s just not possible.”
Mr. Swearingen’s lawyer, James Rytting, said the state’s circumstantial evidence paled when stacked against the mounds of scientific data. “We’re talking about a setup in this case,” Mr. Rytting said.
Both Mr. Swearingen and Mr. Rytting concede that some of Mr. Swearingen’s actions after his arrest, particularly the letter in Spanish, were foolish. But Mr. Swearingen said the letter was meant only to prod his lawyers, who wanted him to make a plea deal, to investigate whether someone else killed Ms. Trotter. And he said crime scene details in the letter — written months after the body was discovered — came from the autopsy report that he had read.
Cigarette butts police found were the same brand Ms. Trotter smoked, but DNA on them did not match hers. The torn-up papers that neighbors found on the street showed up nearly a week after Mr. Swearingen was arrested — trash trucks had been by twice in that time. And Mr. Swearingen said Ms. Trotter had been in his truck when the two had gone out on previous occasions, so it made sense for the hair and fibers to match.
The torn pantyhose leg was discovered on Jan. 6, four days after Ms. Trotter’s body was found with a pantyhose leg around the neck. On Dec. 15 and Dec. 18, the police had spent hours rummaging through the trailer, looking for evidence, but did not find the pantyhose.
What’s more, lawyers argued in court pleadings, DNA tests on blood found under Ms. Trotter’s fingernails belonged to a man — but not to Mr. Swearingen.
Barrage of Experts
Prosecutors in Montgomery County do not buy the setup theory, and the courts have rejected repeated pleas from Mr. Swearingen’s lawyers to review the scientific evidence.
In a November 2009 court ruling, Melinda Harmon, a judge in the United States District Court, wrote that Mr. Swearingen should have discovered and presented the forensic evidence years earlier. But she did not only deny his plea based on procedure; Ms. Harmon wrote that the scientists’ reports were not credible because they each reviewed different kinds of evidence. Some looked at microscopic tissue samples, some examined photos and video, and others looked at bugs. “This is not a case where Mr. Swearingen’s evidence is so compelling that a court cannot have confidence in the outcome of his trial,” she wrote.
Yet in a rare move last week, the notoriously pro-prosecution Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Mr. Swearingen’s scheduled Aug. 18 execution and ordered a lower court to review his claims of actual innocence.
For Mr. Swearingen and his lawyers, the stay was a big victory. “This stay acknowledges powerful scientific evidence of innocence,” Mr. Rytting said.
Bill Delmore, the Montgomery County assistant district attorney who is now leading the state’s case against Mr. Swearingen, dismisses the litany of expert opinions. He is confident that the state’s case remains strong. “It is very frustrating to have to deal with this constant barrage of differing expert opinions that I often don’t understand,” he said.
The Trotters, meanwhile, remain convinced that Mr. Swearingen killed their daughter. And they are ready for it all to end — his appeals and his life. Sandy Trotter said she dreads a court hearing in which scientists and lawyers will trudge through the gory details of her daughter’s death and her decaying, infested body — a body that she watched grow from infancy to womanhood and then be buried in her mother’s wedding dress."
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THE STORY CAN BE FOUND AT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/us/07ttswearingen.html?_r=1
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog; hlevy15@gmail.com;
