Morley Swingle

Greetings! If we ever meet, I hope it is through my books, and not from my work as a prosecutor. If you encounter me through my day job, you are probably not having one of your better days. On the other hand, reading a good mystery or true crime book is one of life's great pleasures!

Morley Swingle is the Prosecuting Attorney for Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. He has prosecuted over 70 homicide cases and tried nearly 130 jury trials, everything from death penalty murder cases to drunk driving trials. Some of his more sensational cases have been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Dateline, Arrest & Trial and Forensic Files. His historical mystery/thrillers include The Gold of Cape Girardeau (winner of the 2005 Book Award from the Missouri Humanities Council and praised as "absorbing courtroom drama" by Elmore Leonard) and Bootheel Man (finalist for the 2008 William Rockhill Nelson Award for fiction and compared by David Hurst Thomas to the novels of Tony Hillerman). Swingle's true crime/humor book Scoundrels to the Hoosegow: Perry Mason Moments and Entertaining Cases From the Files of a Prosecuting Attorney, lauded as "excellent, engrossing and highly recommended" by Vincent Bugliosi, has been described as a true crime combination of Law & Order and Seinfeld. Swingle graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Law in 1980 and the FBI's Advanced Course for Prosecutors at Quantico, Virginia in 1992. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Cape Girardeau County Major Case Squad and has published numerous articles in law journals. Since 1999, he has served on the Missouri Supreme Court's Committee on Procedure in Criminal Cases. A recognized expert on search and seizure law, he has taught at seminars for prosecutors, judges, police officers and lawyers around the country and teaches New Developments in Criminal Law every year at the Missouri Judicial College. In 2007, the University of Missouri School of Law awarded him membership in the Order of the Coif. While in law school he was a member of the Missouri Law Review and was Chairman of the Board of Advocates. In April of 2009, Swingle's short story "Hard Blows" ("a prosecutor may strike hard blows, but fair ones") was published in The Prosecution Rests, the MWA anthology edited by Linda Fairstein. "Hard Blows" was nominated on June 11, 2010, for a Barry Award in the category of Best Short Story of 2009.  Swingle lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, with his wife and two daughters.