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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. ...While plenty of circumstantial evidence indicated Swearingen, a convicted rapist, was a logical suspect, forensic facts not presented at his trial point elsewhere...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 24, 2009 (boomark / email).