(AP) -- HOUSTON (AP) - The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected a request Wednesday from the condemned killer of a 19-year-old Montgomery County student to submit evidence in his case to additional DNA testing.
Larry Swearingen, 38, is on death row for abducting and strangling Melissa Trotter, a student at what then was known as Montgomery College, near Conroe. Her body was found in January 1999 some 20 miles away in Sam Houston National Forest south of Huntsville, nearly a month after she was last seen leaving the school library.
Swearingen and his attorneys have argued he was in jail on outstanding traffic warrants when Trotter was killed. Montgomery County prosecutors insist evidence shows Trotter was killed before Swearingen was in jail.
A year ago, a federal appeals court spared Swearingen a day before he was scheduled to die. It was the second time a court stopped his punishment a day before it was to be carried out.
Swearingen's trial court in Conroe has rejected at least three previous requests for additional DNA testing.
In his appeal to the Texas appeals court, Swearingen wanted retesting of blood and scrapings from under Trotter's fingernails so it could be compared with DNA samples in a national criminal database and retesting of scrapings from her clothing and other items.
The court said the "mere fact" technology exists and potentially could be successful "is not enough to create the right to testing." The court also said the trial record "is void of any concrete evidence that biological material existed on the evidence sought to be tested."
Even if it granted Swearingen's request, overwhelming evidence pointing to his guilt likely would not change his trial's outcome, the court wrote in its denial.
Swearingen's lawyer, James Rytting, did not immediately return a phone message from The Associated Press.
Swearingen won't get a new execution date until additional federal court appeals are resolved, Marc Brumberger, an assistant Montgomery County district attorney, said Wednesday.
Swearingen said at his trial he met Trotter at the college campus the day she disappeared, but they both left separately.
Evidence showed Trotter was in Swearingen's trailer in Willis and in his pickup truck, where detectives found hair forcibly pulled from her head. Pantyhose used to strangle Trotter was found in the trash outside Swearingen's trailer. Cell phone records from the day Trotter vanished showed he was in the area where her body was discovered.
Swearingen had at least two accusations of rape against him plus an allegation of assault on an ex-wife, but charges never were brought. He had a previous burglary conviction.
In another case Wednesday, the Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction and death sentence of Adam Kelly Ward, 27, condemned for gunning down a housing code enforcement officer in north Texas in a trash dispute.
Ward was sent to death row for the 2005 fatal shooting of Michael "Pee Wee" Walker in Commerce, about 60 miles northeast of Dallas.
Evidence showed Ward opened fire after the officer photographed his home in a code violation investigation. Walker, 44, was following up on complaints of trash in the yard.
Ward's appeal argued the trial judge improperly limited evidence of Ward's mental impairment and questioned the legality of the death penalty in Texas.
The court Wednesday also refused to reconsider additional DNA testing requested by a Mexican national condemned for the killing of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio.
Humberto Leal, 36, of Monterrey, Mexico, wanted more testing to clear him in the May 1994 rape and bludgeoning of Adria Sauceda. Her body was found on a dirt road near a party they both attended.
The appeals court ruled last year that because of evidence and extensive DNA testing done for Leal's trial, additional testing wasn't likely to change the outcome.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
(Copyright ©2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
