CONVICTED MONTGOMERY CO. KILLER GETS DEATH DATE

  

A 46-year-old Montgomery County man, condemned for the slaying of a college student almost 19 years ago, has received an execution date.

State District Judge J.D. Langley has set Nov. 16 for Larry Swearingen's lethal injection.

Swearingen was convicted of the abduction, rape and strangling of 19-year-old Melissa Trotter. She was last seen leaving a community college in Conroe in December 1998. Her body was found a nearly a month later in a forest near Huntsville.

The U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last year both refused the latest in a long series of appeals seeking additional DNA testing of evidence in the case.

Swearingen's attorneys also sued the state appeals court judges but a federal judge last month rejected the suit as frivolous.