Former Milwaukee City Attorney Tearman Spencer has been sentenced to serve 18 months behind bars and ordered to pay a $7,000 fine after being convicted of felony misconduct in public office, bringing a significant legal development to a high-profile municipal ethics case.
The punishment was handed down on September 10 by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jorge R. Fragoso. Inside the courtroom, the 69-year-old former municipal official showed visible signs of dejection, lowering his shoulders and pinching the bridge of his nose as the bench announced the custodial term.
Beyond the period of confinement and the financial assessment, Judge Fragoso ordered Spencer to complete 100 hours of community service. The former city attorney must also enroll in and complete a cognitive thinking class as part of the formal judgment against him.
Spencer is slated to serve his incarceration locally at the Milwaukee County Community Reintegration Center situated in Franklin. While his destination for confinement was designated, the precise timetable for him to report to the Franklin correctional facility was not immediately made public following the proceedings, after which he exited alongside his legal counsel, William Sulton.
The formal sentencing follows a criminal verdict delivered on July 31 by a Milwaukee County jury. Following a four-day trial, jurors concluded that Spencer was guilty of felony misconduct in office, while simultaneously acquitting the former city attorney on a misdemeanor count of obstructing an officer.
Under state statutes governing the felony misconduct conviction, the former municipal legal officer had faced statutory penalties that could have resulted in up to two years of incarceration, accompanied by 18 months of extended supervision and a maximum fine reaching $10,000.
The state’s prosecution centered on evidence that Spencer improperly harnessed the authority of his municipal position for private advantage. Specifically, prosecutors argued that he utilized the office to interfere with and intimidate personnel from the city's Department of Neighborhood Services who were tasked with inspecting a property he had previously owned.
During the July trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Spencer commandeered municipal resources by instructing his subordinate legal staff to construct a specialized legal memorandum. The purpose of this internal document was to halt official city property inspections and shield Spencer from paying thousands of dollars in required structural repairs and associated municipal fees.
Trial testimony and evidence revealed that the real estate at the center of the dispute was a building utilized by Spencer to house his personal collection of automobiles, establishing that the official intervention was executed to safeguard his personal financial interests rather than those of the public.
During the sentencing phase, Assistant Attorney General Nicolas Heitman petitioned the court to impose a term of six to nine months of jail time. Heitman emphasized that Spencer had severely compromised the public trust invested in him as a citywide elected figure while exhibiting no visible remorse for his actions.
Addressing the bench during arguments, the state prosecutor underscored that the misconduct was not an isolated lapse in judgment, remarking that the defendant's conduct reflected a broader tendency where questionable actions began to form an unmistakable pattern of behavior.
Spencer originally secured the position of Milwaukee City Attorney during the municipal elections in April 2020. His tenure as the city's chief legal representative concluded four years later when he was defeated in his 2024 re-election campaign by current City Attorney Evan Goyke.
The completion of the misconduct trial does not resolve Spencer's broader legal difficulties, as the former city attorney remains entangled in additional criminal proceedings stemming from separate official investigations.
In October 2025, prosecutors filed four separate felony charges against Spencer regarding allegations of unlawful property dealings. In that matter, the state alleges that Spencer conspired with a business partner, identified as real estate agent Kennard Wragg, to illicitly secure a local residential parcel with the intention of reselling it for a substantial financial return.
Court filings associated with that ongoing case allege that Wragg convinced a Milwaukee resident to circumvent formal probate court procedures and transfer the inherited family estate for an agreed sum of $8,000, despite the real property carrying a market value far exceeding that figure.
The secondary felony case has since been transferred out of the local court system and will be adjudicated in neighboring Waukesha County, where an additional court hearing in the matter was scheduled to take place on September 11.
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