Did Kellyanne Conway murder Melissa Trotter?

It's been a while, years in fact, since I've written about Larry Swearingen who did not kill Melissa Trotter.  That's the same Larry Swearingen the good people of the State of Texas intend to kill on November 16 for the murder of Melissa Trotter.  The same Melissa Trotter Larry Swearingen did not kill.

Sigh.

Let's do this in three parts.

Part I:  Larry Swearingen was in police custody when Melissa Trotter was elsewhere getting killed.   That seems incontestable.  

The Texas courts don't care.  The prosecutors don't care.  After all, there's all that circumstantial evidence and junk science that points to him.  Therefore he's guilty.  Proof that he's innocent would be, I don't know . . . . 

Wait, I got it.

Alternative Facts.

Cool.  Let's blame the killing on Kellanne Conway.  I don't know where she was at the time.

Anyhow, whoever killed Melissa Trotter, it wasn't Larry Swearingen.

But, again, the courts don't care.  The prosecutors don't care.  And Texas plans to kill him on November 16.

Part II:  As I've said from time to time in the context of more than one allegedly bad guy

TEST THE FUCKING DNA!

But of course they won't.  Well, that's not quite right.  They've tested some.  To the surprise of pretty much nobody who paid attention to Part I, 

IT AIN'T HIS.

Which is, of course, not of any particular interest to the courts or the prosecutors.  Who don't care.

There's more stuff that can be tested, really, stuff that should be tested.  The trial court (the Texas trial court!) has a couple of times now ordered the testing under the Texas post-trial DNA testing statute. Of course, the prosecutor appealed, because -- we'll get to that.  And the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said "No."

YOU MAY NOT TEST THE DNA!
YOU MAY NOT TEST IT IN A CAB!
YOU MAY NOT TEST IT IN A LAB!
YOU MAY NOT TEST THE DNA!
YOU MAY NOT TEST IT, THAT WE SAY!

Oh, and in particular, if testing were to be allowed, the DNA could not be run against the existing DNA databases to see if it matched a person who might have killed Melissa Trotter.  Say, someone who understands and hides behind alternative facts.  Say, Kellyanne Conway.

Nah!

No testing, no checking.

But the court is cool with killingLarry Swearingen November 16 for the murder of Melissa Trotter whom he did not kill.

Part III:  Which brings me to the prosecutor and the reason he doesn't want the testing done - though he'd love to have it done.  Just as long as he can be assured that the testing will be irrelevant.  Jordan Smith, at The Intercept: 

The problem is with the way the statute is written, says Bill Delmore, chief of the Montgomery County DA’s Legal Services Bureau, which handles the office’s appeals. In deciding whether a defendant is eligible for DNA testing, a judge is required to find that exculpatory results would likely change the outcome of the defendant’s trial. That’s exactly what Case found each time he granted Swearingen’s request. But Delmore says his office is unwilling to accept that possibility. “I would never, ever agree — never, ever agree — that the presence of a third party’s DNA on some random piece of evidence in this case establishes that Larry Swearingen is innocent. That is ridiculous,” he said.

What the DA’s office wants is to be able to conduct testing without ever having to acknowledge that the results might change the original conviction. “If you told me that all the other evidence had somebody else’s DNA on it, then I’d say, well, [that person] must’ve done this with Larry Swearingen,” Delmore said. “It’s really hard for me to imagine DNA evidence in this case that would actually, in my mind, exonerate Swearingen.”

See, the problem is that the evidence might matter.  Oh, sure, it would just get a hearing.  But damn, then someone would have to consider . . . .

Still, Delmore is adamant that he and his boss Ligon are not opposed to DNA testing, per se. “We’ve always been willing to do the testing, but we’re not willing to do it under the constraints that this stupid statute puts on us.”

Besides, they probably like Kellyanne Conway.

Or maybe it was Sean Spicer.

OK, I'll come clean.  I don't think it was Kellyanne Conway.  She probably wasn't there, either.