The second round of DNA testing has apparently been completed and the results placed into evidence.  It's important to keep in mind that there is not one piece of evidence which exonerates Skinner--never has been.  There was, however, plenty of DNA which further linked Skinner to the crime: his blood on a knife used to murder at least one of the victims, his blood all over the room where the kids were murdered, etc.  (from the first round).  The DNA testing also put to bed this nonsensical theory about Twila being raped.

The only thing that have is the stuff they don't have like "the jacket" that allows them to say "if only we had this jacket we could prove Skinner didn't commit the crime" nonsense.

So they're back to where they started: innuendo and gross distortion of the facts.

It's just that, this time, there's less for them to work with--and maybe a few more inconvenient facts for them to deal with.

Update: "Something tells me" that there are going to be some more DNA results released maybe as early as the first week in March.  "Something tells me" that Hank and Wifeaux really aren't going to be pleased.

Craig Watkins came into office pledging to review convictions of those who were wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they did not commit--a truly noble goal; almost a higher purpose.  This had never before been a focus in Dallas County and I'm glad he did it.

However, now that he's focused on the wrongfully convicted (who nobody wants behind bars--or if you do, there's something really wrong with you, right?) and he made a rightfully-deserved name for himself, Craig's decided to go look for other ways to make a name for himself.  He's decided to focus on politicizing those who got what they deserved for artificial reasons.

Us: "but she viciously butchered a woman, cut her finger off so she could steal a wedding ring, stole cars, cash, etc., and ran off to her crack house to buy drugs with it--these facts are not in dispute."

Craig: "yes, true, but were there enough blacks on the jury?"

My experience after having been the foreman of a jury in Dallas County is that it's probably a good thing there were not more black people on this jury.  If there had been, McCarthy might have been sentenced to death twice!  Drugs, and the things that go with it, are destroying the Southern sector.  A whole bunch of people who live around it are getting very very tired of it.

A little bird told me that there may be some new developments in Hank's case really really soon!

Just got the following comment on a Youtube video where Skinner accuses his ex-wife of the murders:

Yeah, that ex-wife is my mother and there is no possible way she could have committed the murder. She had an air tight alibi for one and she and Twila were good friends for two. In addition, Skinner was the one who abused my mother during their volatile relationship and he wants to find a new fall guy. The poor uncle is now dead and can't defend himself, so he has to have someone else to try to put the blame off on.

I'm always amazed at the real people whose lives are impacted/destroyed by these beasts even years after they should have been worm food.  Here's to Skinner's lucky number being 2013!

http://youtu.be/-3b_SEaO5mA

The Dallas County DA, Craig Watkins, announced that he was authoring legislation similar to North Carolina's which would allow inmates to appeal their convictions on the basis of race.  I suspect this is why he said he wasn't opposing McCarthy's last minute jab at an appeal.

Again, you have to take all of the evidence in it's totality: the crime scene, his blood, his DNA, his behavior, his history, his statements at the time of his arrest, his statements since the crime, etc.  When you add all that up and look at it from a 50,000 foot view, there's no way there's "reasonable doubt."  He's finally gotten smart about talking out his a** since the crime.  The only way you can conclude Hank is innocent is to ignore everything for which there's an explanation--and focus on only those things which Hank (and his victims) could explain.  Hank is a con.  He's dishonest to the core (looks like he's always been that way) and doesn't have anything to lose by lying.

Hi Lisa,

I empathize with your frustration.  However, if you step back and look: this guy will wait out justice in a small metal box.  His roommate is a toilet.  He's told what he can and can't do 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  He is deprived of virtually all meaningful human contact.  He will spend his remaining years there knowing that the ultimate end of it all will be a needle in his arm.  When he gets a date (and he'll probably get several) he will agonize over whether this will be the real day, or whether his lawyer can get him off one more time.

Yes, I wish justice were quicker; especially when everyone knows it's deserved.  However, if the wheels must turn slow, that's not a bad way for a scumbag to spend the rest of his life!

Anyway, sorry for your loss.  I hope we can be supportive.

Just wait for the DNA.  In my mind there are only two possible outcomes from the tests; he will be difinitively linked to these items and hence the murders, or the DNA will be inconclusive in which case you would have to default to the juries orginal verdict and sentence.  Either way is bye bye Hank in '13.

He's already definitively linked to the murders.  This "oh but wait, there's DNA we can't identify on the knife" of "they lost the jacket that could exonerate him" is nothing more than distracting bunk.  The money that wifeaux wants to collect is for advertising or for her and her buddies to go drinking or spend on French income tax.

You know, I love John Bennett Allen (The Skeptical Juror).  I read his stuff all the time when I'm in need of a good needling of tediousness over the least likely sequence of details that can prove, when considered in the absence of common sense, how innocent a guilty person can be.  I also like to read the victim..er..convict's own website to see where they show the world how [insert state] is about ready to execute a truly innocent man.

By the way, here's his link to his "Absolutely Astounding Case of Larry Swearingen" ...

http://www.skepticaljuror.com/2011/08/absolutely-astounding-case-of-larry.html

So, go ahead, read part 1 (and as much of the rest as you want).  Then come back here.

I've always said that before we get to the "complicated," we need to get past the "simple". 

John (or J. Bennett or John B. or J.B. or whatever he wants to call himself this week) concludes "part 1" by posing the challenge: "Can you, as a skeptical juror, see it?  Can you see why Larry Swearingen must be factually innocent based on the evidence just presented?"

What follows, in the next 5 parts, is the "complicated."  The "facts" John cites in his diatribe do, beyond a shadow of a doubt, prove that Swearingen could not have possible committed this atrocious murder.  Even Swearingen's own website http://www.larry-swearingen.com backs all John's stuff up.  So, there.  Swearingen's another innocent victim of the death penalty.  We can all go home now.

Before we go, though, I have a couple of "simple" questions that I'm having trouble getting past.  Maybe someone can help me make sense of these:

1) While in jail Swearingen faked a letter, with the help of a cellmate and an English-Spanish dictionary, to his mom purporting to be from a girl who was with Trotter's real murderer.  The letter contained a bunch of accurate, gory details about the crime.

2) A bunch of physical evidence was found at Swearingen's house/truck including things like the other half of the pair of panty hose found wrapped around the victim's neck and "forcibly removed hair follicles" from the victim's head.

So here are some "simple" questions about these two things:

1) How'd he know all this stuff?

2) How'd all that stuff get there?

Pretty fair questions, eh?  Pretty simple.  Yet, I can't find a good answer to either of these on either John's or Swearingen's website.  Can you?

As to the voluminous earth-shattering scientific revelations, I found the following nugget at the bottom of a story in the Austin Comical:  http://www.austinchronicle.com/blogs/news/2012-08-20/judge-ready-to-rule-against-swearingen/

Prosecutor Warren Diepraam seemed to have a decent explanation.  He identified gaps in the chain-of-custody, questionable results (including one DNA sample attributed to Trotter that showed her to be male).  He summed it up nicely: "The defense is using junk science not supported by anybody; ours is supported by decades and hundreds of years of research."

So let's put a bottom line on all of this: guys like Swearingen, Hank Skinner, Troy Davis (and the rest of the seemingly endless parade of wrongfully-convicted death penalty poster children) have one thing in common: they create doubt by spending post-conviction years carefully crafting a twisty little maze of tedious evidence and supporting facts, some of which appears to be extremely convincing, to distract you from the "simple" questions you'd intuitively have.

Simple questions like: "Larry, how did you have all that accurate knowledge of the crime" and "how did all that physical evidence get in all those inconvenient places"?

So everybody go home and enjoy Christmas!  Don't feel too guilty if you aren't a true skeptical juror like John.  I'm sure you'll have many more opportunities to feel guilty!

I'm going to send this guy a Christmas card.  Here's how it's going to read:

"Dear Mr. Leisure Guy: Wishing you a very Merry Christmas from this beautiful open meadow by the lake I'm sitting at writing this card.  Perhaps you'll be taunted by color pictures of a similar one on the TV you watch from your solitary air-conditioned metal box where you may spend decades waiting for your final destiny.  While you take one of your leisure naps, you can dream about me walking barefoot along a Hawaiian beach (where I'll be next week) digging my toes in the sand and feeling the surf wash over my ankles.  So I'll raise my wine glass and toast your metal-boxed five senses and the limitless indulgence they'll never again experience.  Have a nice nap!"

"From the Self-Righteous Clowns at off2dr.com"

...cruelty has it's place from time to time

I should know this.  Does anyone know if Robert Donnell's DNA was ever sampled?  I am curious as to why they didn't just test that, along with Skinner's ex-wife (both of whom he has only relatively recently blamed for the murders).

Of course none of this will matter.  When you put it all in context, the only people who could possibly bring themselves to doubt Skinner's guilt with a straight face are Wifeaux, J. Bennett Allen (the Naively Skeptical Juror), and some of the PTO crowd.  I don't even believe Rob Owen (his lawyer) thinks he's innocent.

They'll likely concentrate on turning Skinner into yet-another Troy Davis who won the war of public opinion; but where it counts (the courtroom) had nothing more than innuendo and carefully crafted (twisty rabbit hole) baseless theory.

Skinner’s DNA was also found on the handle of a bloody knife that was recovered from the front porch of the home, along with DNA from Caler and at least one other contributor, who was not identified.

I wonder how long it will be until we hear Skinner say: "hey, in my stuporous state, I barely remember Uncle Bob putting the knife in my hand, dragging me over to the kids' bedroom but I passed out before I could remember him plunging my hand into the kids' chest then dragging me out onto the porch, dropping the knife then taking me back over to the couch where I woke up."  "Musta hadta happen that way you know."

Guess Hank's also going to have to invent a theory other than rape to go with it too, eh?  Space aliens?

In case you ever doubt he did it: http://youtu.be/aq_1YmLYpQ8


(Put it in for you.  Granny B)

I updated www.hankskinner.com to reflect this latest development that Hank's going to need to explain away.

UPDATE: SKINNER'S DNA STRENGTHENS STATE'S CASE

The Texas Attorney General released an advisory on November 14, 2012, indicating further DNA testing performed on unanalyzed crime scene evidence strenthened the case against Skinner. Among other things, the DNA testing showed Skinner's blood all over the back bedroom where he stabbed the Caler brothers to death. Skinner's blood was also found all over a knife on the front porch.

Oh, and the rape kit? You know the one Skinner has said would contain DNA from the conveniently-dead suspect-uncle? It came back negative too. Skinner and his lawyer are pinning their remaining hope on an "unidentified contributor" whose DNA was found at the scene--hoping innuendo can trump all that blood.

My understanding is that there are new developments in the DNA testing but those "in the know" can't really talk about it.  It is also my understanding that many of us here will likely be pleased.  It will still, likely, take years.

AG Says DNA Tests Implicate Hank Skinner in '93 Murders
 
by Brandi Grissom November 14, 2012

DNA testing that death row inmate Hank Skinner sought for more than a decade further implicates him in the New Year’s Eve 1993 triple murder for which he was sentenced to die, according to an advisory that the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed Wednesday in Gray County state district court.

See, thank goodness that leftist activijouralists (like that phrase?) like Brandi Grissom obviously read off2dr and call the AG's press person within 24-hours!  It's going to be fun to watch Hank and Wifeaux wiggle

Thanks Brandi!!!