Milwaukee Catholic Herald – October 5, 2006

Religious beliefs at core
of death penalty opposition

Jeff Sweetland defended inmate who was executed

By Maryangela Layman Román
Catholic Herald Staff

Jeff Sweetland, an attorney with Hawkes, Quindel, Ehlke and Perry S.C., is an outspoken opponent of the death penalty. In the late 1980s, the Milwaukee attorney represented Ronald Spivey, a man who eventually was executed by lethal injection for murdering a police officer in 1976. (Catholic Herald photo by Sam Lucero)

MILWAUKEE — It’s been nearly five years since his client was put to death by lethal injection, but attorney Jeff Sweetland is haunted by one thought: Could he have done more to prevent Ronald Spivey’s execution?

Sweetland doesn’t believe an innocent man was executed. There’s no doubt Spivey shot and killed two people, one an off-duty Columbus, Ga., police officer, during a night of crime that included a kidnapping, robbery and the shooting and wounding of a third man. Yet, Sweetland, a member of St. Ben Parish, Milwaukee, and Milwaukee Catholics for Peace and Justice Death Penalty Project, believes no matter the circumstances, it is always wrong to kill.

Sweetland, 59, was opposed to the death penalty even prior to representing Spivey in the late 1980s. After meeting his wife Margaret in California while working for the United Farm Workers, the couple relocated to Mississippi where Sweetland attended law school at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss).

Sweetland, in an interview with your Catholic Herald at the downtown law offices of Hawkes, Quindel, Ehlke and Perry S.C., recalled how he and his wife attended a prayer vigil outside the prison in fall 1983 when Mississippi was scheduled to execute in the gas chamber its first death row inmate — a man who had raped and murdered a young girl — since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.

Religious beliefs and morality motivated the couple, said Sweetland, who added, “Both of us are firmly convinced that the death penalty does not square with either.”

After completing law school, Sweetland worked for the Atlanta law firm, Greene, Buckley, Jones and McQueen, and one of the first cases he was assigned was Spivey’s. Along with senior partner, Ferdinand Buckley, Sweetland worked on his habeas corpus case which alleged constitutional errors occurred during Spivey’s retrial.

Spivey was first tried in 1977 for his Dec. 27, 1976 crimes. Rather quickly a jury found him guilty of shooting and killing a man in a Macon, Ga., pool hall brawl over $20. Following that murder, he drove to Columbus to the Final Approach Lounge where, according to Sweetland, Spivey even left his business card with the waitress, bragging that she would be reading about him the next day. Spivey was referring to the murder hours earlier at the pool hall.

Yet his rap sheet quickly grew longer when around the lounge’s closing time, he pulled out a gun, ordered the bar maid, a waitress and the remaining customer to the back of the lounge, according to a press advisory released in 2002 by the Georgia attorney general.

He took $200 from the cash drawer and $50 from the bar maid’s purse. About this time, Billy Watson, an off duty police officer who was working as a security guard at a nearby restaurant, noticed the lounge’s door was still open after 2 a.m. As he and another man went to investigate, Spivey shot and killed Watson. He stole a car, took the waitress hostage and was subsequently arrested in Alabama.

Spivey’s first trial in June 1977 went quickly and he was found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Charles McCook at the pool hall but the second conviction for killing Watson was initially thrown out.

He was retried in November 1983 and was again found guilty of murdering Watson and the jury imposed the death sentence.

The following year Sweetland was assigned Spivey’s case. For the next four years, he got to know Spivey who he described as a physically large, highly intelligent man. According to newspaper reports, Spivey stood 6-feet-7, and weighed 360 pounds.

“He was a genius who was eligible for Mensa. His IQ would dwarf most people’s,” said Sweetland, adding that even though he was “a huge guy, in some ways, he was extremely child-like. He was a demanding fellow and could wear on your patience.”

Yet, Sweetland said this hulking figure was also very frightened about death. In all, he spent a quarter century on death row.

“Who among us would even for a minute want to stand in his shoes and be on Georgia’s death row?” asked Sweetland rhetorically.

Shortly after Spivey’s first state habeas corpus case was denied, the Sweetlands relocated to Milwaukee where Sweetland began his current position in labor and employment law with Hawkes, Quindel, Ehlke and Perry, and Margaret, a registered nurse, began working with S.E.T. Ministry.

Sweetland had sporadic contact from Spivey, including a note Spivey sent in fall of 2001. Earlier in the year, Sweetland heard from a colleague that Spivey was scheduled to go to the electric chair. Spivey registered one victory in October when courts agreed with him that the electric chair represented cruel and unusual punishment. He was instead executed by lethal injection on Jan. 24, 2002.

His final words, Spivey said, were, “If I had a million lives, I couldn’t say I’m sorry enough …. In our society, we hear and say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ You can believe I don’t believe Jesus would do this …. It allows no room for redemption.”

While Sweetland expected Spivey’s death, he “felt pretty lousy,” when he learned of it.

“I’m always going to wonder if there were other things I could have done to do that habeas better, if something else was missed. I’m sure that defense attorney and all those defense attorneys who try these capital cases wonder what could we have done to save this guy. It’s all well and good to have a client who goes to jail yelling and screaming that my lawyer didn’t do a good job, but it’s quite a different thing when you know someone is being killed.”

His legal experience has reaffirmed Sweetland’s opposition to capital punishment. For example, he said prosecutors may require anyone fundamentally opposed to the death penalty not be allowed to sit on the jury. In essence, he said, that results in a biased jury and often leaves a group of jurors who are more likely to find the defendant guilty.

Morally, Sweetland questioned how capital punishment squares with the command that one is to respect life.

“We respect human life in all its forms and all its stages. How does it square with the fundamental Christian belief that even though each of us is born to sin, each of us is a beloved child of God and each of us has the capacity for redemption? Where do we get the notion that human agency may step in to interrupt that process? How does anyone who claims that he or she is pro life and is fundamentally opposed to any public action or policy that artificially terminates human life can make an exception for this?,” he asked.

“Was (Pope) John Paul wrong when he recognized that capital punishment is a foundation stone of a culture of death and urged that in the developed world —to the extent that there was justification in earlier times — in each in terms of preservation of public safety, that that justification no longer exists?,” he said.

During talks against the death penalty at area churches and during April testimony before the senate judiciary committee, Sweetland talks about his experiences with capital punishment and states his hope that Wisconsin does not follow the same path.

“Part of my loathing of capital punishment is the way it corrupts our law. I’m a lawyer because fundamentally I love the law. I love the way that it is a law based predominantly on reason and fundamental common sense,” he said, adding that because the Supreme Court has since said juries can exercise reason in their imposition of capital punishment, “that’s been a complete travesty and a joke.”

“Wisconsin has done very well without (the death penalty) for 150 plus years Are there murders in Wisconsin? Absolutely. Are there some very awful murders? Occasionally, yes, but when we start down the road of saying … we have been wrong all those years. We want to copy them and have our own death penalty. We want to be tough guys, we don’t want to look like sissies and I think that’s what an awful lot of this is.”