SWINGLE TO QUIT ABA OVER STANCE

The American Bar Association will have at least one less member when Cape Girardeau County Prosecuting Attorney Morley Swingle resigns from the group.

Swingle wrote his letter of resignation Monday, the same day he learned the nation's largest organization of lawyers voted to seek a moratorium against the death penalty.

"I refuse to be a part of an organization that has ceased to represent the views of the rest of us," said Swingle, who has been an ABA member since 1980, when he graduated law school.

The vote by the American Bar Association's House of Delegates was 280-119. The vote was held Monday at San Antonio.

"I doubt that the 280 delegates ever listened to the heart-breaking sobs of the family of a murder victim," Swingle said.

In the letter of resignation, Swingle wrote that, with the new policy against the death penalty, the ABA has become a "mouthpiece for pointy-headed, elitist, arrogant, pencil pushers who probably have never seen the inside of a courtroom. ... Read my lips: You are out of touch."

Swingle said most law school professors are liberal and against the death penalty so the students are taught that slant. Most of those professors have never been inside a courtroom.

Swingle has tried two death penalty cases and in each the death penalty was given. He will try his third death penalty case later this year against Russell Bucklew, who allegedly killed a man and raped a woman.

"I don't think these lawyers should be trying to decide something that is left up to the states," said Swingle. "A majority of states have the death penalty and I firmly believe it deters some murders.

"It wouldn't have deterred Charles Manson or Richard Speck, people like that. But I think it deters some and that means it saves lives. If it saves just a few lives, it's worth it."

By the way, Swingle also requested his dues back.