Texas executed Larry Swearingen for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.

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Texas executed Larry Swearingen for a 1998 Texas slaying. His lawyer says bad science got him on death row.

Swearingen consistently maintained his innocence in the strangling death of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. Texas prosecutors, however, had no doubt he was her killer.

BY JOLIE MCCULLOUGH AUG. 21, 2019UPDATED: 15 HOURS AGO

For decades, a staunch claim of innocence and doubts over forensic science engulfed the death penalty case of Larry Swearingen. On Wednesday, he was executed in Texas' death chamber.

The 48-year-old man lived on death row for nearly two decades, consistently expressing his innocence in the 1998 strangling death of Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old community college student in Montgomery County he had said was his friend. Multiple state courts had previously taken five execution dates off the calendar over the years to look into different issues surrounding Swearingen’s conviction, but prosecutors and Trotter’s family remain firmly convinced he was her killer.

After a late appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court minutes before his scheduled execution time of 6 p.m., Swearingen was taken into the execution chamber in Huntsville and connected to an IV.        https://www.texastribune.org/2019/08/21/larry-swearingen-execution-texas/