Ex-teacher Speers sentenced to 34 years

A former Yuma teacher was sentenced Thursday to more than three decades in prison after being convicted of molesting two of his students.

Visiting Maricopa County Judge Christopher Whitten gave Philip Gregory Speers a combined 34 years in prison - 17 years for each of two separate counts of molestation of child.

Speers was convicted earlier this month of two child molestation counts after his previous conviction was overturned. Both he and his family said after Thursday's sentencing they plan to appeal the conviction in his retrial.

"Yuma County taxpayers need to know this is not how this case will end," said Speers' mother, Charlotte. "The prosecution cannot win the case against Greg in a fair trial.

"There are so many reversible errors, it will once again be overturned by the higher courts. Every time we go back to trial, more of the truth is revealed and more counts are dropped. In the end, Greg will be found totally innocent and will be a free man.

"We aren't ever going to give up on this, no matter how long it takes," she added.

Speers, 36, a former second-grade teacher at St. Francis of Assisi School, was found not guilty in the retrial on two other counts of molestation of a child and one count of sexual conduct with a minor.

By law, the sentences must be served consecutively, meaning once Speers finishes serving the first 17-year sentence, he will start serving the second. The judge also gave Speers credit for 2,553 days previously served, dating back to his original conviction.

Prior to the sentencing, prosecutor David Haws of the Yuma County Attorney's Office asked the judge to impose the presumptive sentence, which was 17 years, on each conviction.

Attorney Kristi Riggins of the Yuma County Public Defenders Office, who represented Speers, asked the judge for the minimum sentence of 10 years for each conviction.

"(Speers) is not the evil person the state tries to make him out to be," Riggins said.

Speers also addressed the court prior to sentencing, reading a prepared written statement in which he compared his convictions to the Salem Witch Hunt of 1692.

"I am, of course, disappointed and saddened that I was convicted of a crime I did not commit, and that these girls cannot confess that what they have accused me of is not true," Speers read. "But human nature and human memory is what it is, and it is too much to expect out of these girls what the girls of Salem would never, with one exception, confess they were wrong."

In 2003, he was found guilty of five charges of child molestation and was sentenced to 71 years in prison. In a separate trial in 2002, he was convicted of two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor and was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

The Arizona Court of Appeals overturned both convictions in 2004 and 2005. The state high court ruled that Speers' defense had not been allowed to use an expert witness to testify about how interview techniques used by police might have influenced the testimony of child witnesses, and that the defense was not allowed to call character witnesses.

Speers was also sentenced in 2002 to 34 years in prison after being convicted on two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor for having child pornography on his computer.

He is still awaiting a retrial for the 2002 conviction. After Thursday's sentencing, the judge set Oct. 9 as the start of his retrial on his other overturned conviction.

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James Gilbert can be reached at jgilbert@yumasun.com or 539-6854.

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Philip Gregory Speers read the following statement at his sentencing Thursday:

In 2002 and 2003, when I was first unjustly convicted, I promised at sentencing that I would be back. I make that promise again.

The prosecutors, who at first vowed to have an error-free trial, would soon engage in the widest range of abuses of law and procedure perhaps ever known in an Arizona court.

All I asked for was a fair trial, something that will apparently never happen until I am able to cast off, one by one, each of the charges leveled against me.

For those that would accuse me, and threaten and lie about me and my supporters and witnesses, I can only hope - for the sake of your children at least - that you will find meaning beyond hate; and that you will finally throw away your victim's banners. Or will you lose all meaning, even your very existence, if you move on with your lives? I think you probably will.

I am grateful to be associated with these good people rather than those aligned with the state. Whether one thinks that I am innocent or guilty, to be sure, no one will find a more honorable, kind and just group of people than those who have testified on my behalf or who have prayed for and supported me over the years.

I want to thank these brave ones: those who have dared support me and to give witness to the unerring and unchangeable truth. Refusing to be swayed by the shrill and illogical village rhetoric which calls for all good citizens to see demons where there are none. You have stood as beacons of reason and goodness.

And while our struggle has been long and seemingly fruitless, we have learned to find solace in the fact that we are not among the rabble majority that springs up throughout history and imprisons the marginalized, the unwanted, the ugly, the stranger, the innocent.

We will never cry "witch" even if it means we will be branded witches. And we will never, ever plead to something that we did not do, even if it means our lives and livelihoods.

No, we will not be another Elizabeth Parris, age 9 and a minister's daughter, who contributed to the death of 20 innocent men, women and children accused of witchcraft in Salem Village, 1692.

Nor shall anyone call us by her friend's names: a Sarah Bibber, Elizabeth Booth, Sarah Churchill, Elizabeth Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, Gertrude Pope, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Walcott, Mary Warren, Abagail Williams, or Ann Putnam and her daughter, women and girls who also brought down 20 innocents and imprisoned well over a 100 for witchcraft that we now know did not exist.

Nevertheless, the people of that infamous village were absolutely certain that those they imprisoned, tortured, hung and pressed to death were guilty.

And while the Salem girls knew, at first, that what they said was not true, they would not be found out even if it meant swallowing nails and needles and vomiting them up in the courtroom as an unmistakable sign that the accused was indeed afflicting them.

I am of course disappointed and saddened that I was convicted of a crime I did not commit, and that these girls cannot confess that what they have accused me of is not true. But human nature and human memory is what it is, and it is too much to expect out of these girls what the Salem girls would never, with one exception, confess they were wrong.

On August 25, 1706, Anne Putnam, who of the afflicted girls of Salem had been one of the most relentless of all the accusers, stood up in the Salem meeting house while her formal apology was read to the people. Here is an excerpt:

"I desire to be humbled before God for that said and humbling providence that befell my father's family in the year about 92, that I, then being in my childhood, should ... be made an instrument for the accusing of several persons of a grievous crime, whereby the lives were taken away from them, whom now I have just grounds and good reason to believe they were innocent persons; and that it was a great delusion ... that deceived me in that sad time, whereby I justly fear that I have been instrumental with others, though ignorant and unwittingly, to bring upon myself and this land the guilt of innocent blood; though what was said or done by me against any person I can truly and uprightly say before God and man, I did not do out of any anger, malice, or ill-will to any person, for I had no such thing against any of them; but what I did was done ignorantly, being deluded as I was ..."

I often turn my mind to Giles Corey, the only person in American history known to have been legally pressed to death. Accused by the afflicted girls, this 80-year-old man died by being staked to the ground, under a plank upon which heavy stones were placed.

Of course, those who falsely confessed were saved from the gallows; but the accused witches who said they were innocent were hung. But Giles would dignify the courts with a plea. He was given three chances, and each time he simply cried "more weight!"

Some injustices run so deep and are so obvious that there is only one plea left that is worth giving: more weight. But the harder we the innocent are pushed into the earth, the stronger we will become. We will learn from death, and darkness and the blood that runs from our hearts and even our bodies, until it is time to rise again, until there are no more stones for the self-righteous and the ignorant and the deluded to throw upon us.

And we shall be happy, not because I have regained my freedom, and my life, but because we endured the struggle.