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"Texas death row inmate Larry Swearingen gets 11th-hour reprieve"

"Texas death row inmate Larry Swearingen gets 11th-hour reprieve": The Dallas Morning News provides this update.

The Houston Chronicle has a news update headlined "Man in Montgomery County killing gets stay of execution."

The Associated Press reports that "College student killer get reprieve."

At the "Austin Legal" blog of The Austin American-Statesman, Chuck Lindell has a post titled "Federal court halts Swearingen execution." Tuesday's edition of that newspaper will contain an editorial entitled "U.S. Court stops execution that Texas courts wouldn't; Experts believe condemned man Swearingen could not have committed the murder."

And Texas Monthly has posted an online exclusive article by Michael Hall headlined "The Science of Murder: Someone killed Melissa Trotter and dumped her body in the Sam Houston National Forest; But according to six forensic experts, that someone was not Larry Swearingen."

You can access today's per curiam ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit at this link. In his specially concurring opinion, Circuit Judge Jacques L. Wiener, Jr. writes that this very case could determine whether the U.S. Supreme Court will add "capital defendants who are actually innocent to the list of persons who -- like the insane, the mentally retarded, and the very young -- are constitutionally ineligible for the death penalty."

Full post as published by How Appealing on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).