  A second order accurate, linear numerical method is analyzed for the
Landau-Lifshitz equation with large damping parameters. This equation describes
the dynamics of magnetization, with a non-convexity constraint of unit length
of the magnetization. The numerical method is based on the second-order
backward differentiation formula in time, combined with an implicit treatment
of the linear diffusion term and explicit extrapolation for the nonlinear
terms. Afterward, a projection step is applied to normalize the numerical
solution at a point-wise level. This numerical scheme has shown extensive
advantages in the practical computations for the physical model with large
damping parameters, which comes from the fact that only a linear system with
constant coefficients (independent of both time and the updated magnetization)
needs to be solved at each time step, and has greatly improved the numerical
efficiency. Meanwhile, a theoretical analysis for this linear numerical scheme
has not been available. In this paper, we provide a rigorous error estimate of
the numerical scheme, in the discrete $\ell^{\infty}(0,T; \ell^2) \cap
\ell^2(0,T; H_h^1)$ norm, under suitable regularity assumptions and reasonable
ratio between the time step-size and the spatial mesh-size. In particular, the
projection operation is nonlinear, and a stability estimate for the projection
step turns out to be highly challenging. Such a stability estimate is derived
in details, which will play an essential role in the convergence analysis for
the numerical scheme, if the damping parameter is greater than 3.
