Profile: Leon Spies handles tough cases over 40 years

Editor's note: This story was published in 2015.

IOWA CITY — Like most criminal defense lawyers, Leon Spies has been asked how he stomachs representing people charged with heinous crimes.

Even Spies's parents wondered.

'Mom and Dad used to say 'How can you defend these people?',' Spies said. But when his father was on his deathbed, Spies asked why he had stopped asking the question. His father confessed a truth discerned over years of hearing about his son's work: 'I love the stories.'

Spies's clients have included a meth-maker compared to Walter White from TV's 'Breaking Bad,' a motorcycle gang enforcer, a film aficionado, a slew of University of Iowa athletes and other prominent Iowans.

But Spies himself is a courtroom character with his steadfast calm, elegant handlebar mustache and reputation as one of Iowa's most successful trial lawyers.

Spies, 64, raised in Blue Grass, Iowa, had his first job caddying at the Arsenal Island Golf Course on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River. His father was a machinist and foreman at the Rock Island Arsenal and his mother a milliner at the original Petersen Harned Von Maur department store.

Spies studied finance and economics at the University of Iowa before enrolling in the UI College of Law in 1972.

'It was at the same time the Nixon administration was at its ugliest,' Spies said. 'Everyone wanted to be a journalist or a lawyer.'

Spies grew his trademark mustache — then blond — in college to emulate a 'hippie lawyer' working in the UI's Student Legal Aid Office.

Eric Heintz, a practicing attorney who taught trial advocacy classes at the law school, invited Spies to join the law firm Heintz shared with his then-wife, Sharon Mellon.

One of Spies's most challenging cases was the 2004 federal murder case against Dustin Honken — the first death penalty case in Iowa in 40 years.

Honken and his former girlfriend, Angela Johnson, were charged with slaying five people, including two drug informants, a woman and the woman's daughters, ages 6 and 10, in 1993.

'Dustin was an expert at making meth,' Spies said. 'The DEA agents said it was some of the purest they had ever seen.'

During the ten-week trial in Sioux City, Spies's job was to question expert witnesses and argue against the death penalty. Also on the legal team were Charlie Rogers, of Kansas City, and Alfredo Parrish, a Des Moines lawyer and Spies's best friend.

Honken was convicted, sentenced to death and has been sitting on Death Row since. A federal judge upheld the death sentences in 2013.

Spies and Parrish teamed up again in 2008 when two UI football players, Abe Satterfield and Cedric Everson, were charged with sexually assaulting a female student-athlete in a residence hall room in 2007.

Everson's high-profile trial in 2010 included evidence about student text messages, testimony from Head Football Coach Kirk Ferentz and Spies's claim the woman was in a 'functional blackout,' but could still give consent. Everson, who could have spent 25 years behind bars, was convicted of simple assault and sentenced to a week in jail.

Spies represented a UI student charged with forgery in the 1980s. On a whim, he asked Ordway Hilton, a famous forensic document examiner, if he would testify in the case.

'Mr. Hilton was in the forefront of his profession, detecting everything from altered medical records in damage suits to determining that Clifford Irving's celebrated 'autobiography' of Howard Hughes was a fake,' the New York Times said of Hilton when he died in 1998.

Hilton, who was living in South Carolina at the time, agreed to testify for Spies for free.

'He prepared these wonderful exhibits with copies for all the jurors,' Spies said. After the jury acquitted Spies's client, several asked Hilton for his autograph.

Other high-profile Spies clients include:

• Ron Gruber, an enforcer with the Sons of Silence motorcycle gang, was charged with federal racketeering and state murder charges in the mid-1990s. He was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 50 years. He was paroled after 15 years and now does prison ministry in Des Moines.

• Jane Barto, a former Iowa Workforce Development director, was charged in 2007 in federal court of obstructing an investigation into a scam at the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC). She was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $10,000.

• Susan Freeman-Murdah, an Iowa City neighborhood center director charged in 2012 with failing to report child abuse, was acquitted by a jury.

• John Bloomfield, charged in 2013 with the 1997 murder of his wife in Iowa City, died in November of cardiac arrest before he could stand trial.

Spies gets the best outcomes for his clients through quiet advocacy, not antagonism, said Bob Teig, who went up against Spies in the courtroom until 2011 when Teig retired as an assistant U.S. Attorney.

'He's very smart, and not just on an educational level but on a pragmatic level,' Teig said. 'He's well-versed on the best way to approach a case.'

The highest praise Teig offers? 'If I were in trouble, I'd go to Leon.'

Unlike some people who slow down later in their careers, Spies's caseload is larger and more complex than ever. More of his clients face federal charges, which cross state lines and can carry stiffer penalties.

'My job is to bring the highest level of advocacy and expertise I can,' Spies said. 'Even if they're factually guilty, they're entitled to the same level of representation.'

Spies's legal partner, Sharon Mellon, retired last year, leaving Spies and Joe Pavelich, a 2006 UI College of Law grad who Spies met while teaching trial advocacy — just like his mentor Heintz met Spies 40 years ago. The office is preparing for an expansion, although details are still being ironed out.

Spies is married to Jan Peterson, a quality and compliance officer for Prelude Behavioral Services, and they have two daughters, Caitlin Spies, 35, of Chicago, and Allison Spies, 32, of St. Paul, Minn.