![]() ![]() In the penultimate booth, a prisoner was describing a gunfight for a true crimes TV special, but otherwise, the room was empty. A guard brought him in to the visiting area with his hands cuffed behind his back, removed the cuffs and locked him in a cubicle with a steel cage that resembled the stall of an old-fashioned fairground ride. I interviewed Swearingen for the first time in February 2012. Three times a week, he spends two hours in a central recreation room, where he can play chess, dominoes or Scrabble with other inmates through the bars of their cells. ![]() Twice a week, he is escorted to the yard, alone, to get some fresh air and a glimpse of the sky. ![]() If he stands on his bed, grass and barbed wire are all he can see. If you are found guilty of committing a capital crime in the state of Texas, this is where you end up, in the only permanent-looking structure for miles around.įor the past thirteen years, since being found guilty of murdering a young woman named Melissa Trotter, Larry Swearingen has been kept in solitary confinement, in a eight-by-twelve-foot cell with a slit of a window above head height. Hand-painted signs announce ‘we have minnows’ and offer catfish, live or dressed. Polunsky Unit takes you along the back roads of San Jacinto and Polk counties, through dirt-poor trailerland, past campgrounds lined with nominally mobile homes. Published in the Dublin Review in June 2013.įrom George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, the most direct route to the Allan B. ![]()
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