About Dennis Sweet III
Dennis is a native of Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his degrees from Tougaloo College (B.A.) and George Washington University (J.D.). Dennis was admitted to the D.C. Bar in 1981, the Alabama Bar in 1984, the Mississippi Bar in 1986 and the U.S. Supreme Court in 1985. He is a former staff attorney for the District of Columbia Public Defender's Office and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
He is a former member of The Mississippi Board of Bar Commissioners (1990-1993). Dennis served in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1992-1996. He has served as an Adjunct Professor of criminal law at Mississippi College School of Law and an Instructor at the National Criminal Defense College. He was a teaching team member at Harvard Law School's Trial Advocacy Workshop for several years.
The Mississippi Conference of the NAACP gave Sweet its top legal honor in 1996 and the Magnolia Bar Association honored Sweet with the R. Jess Brown Award in 2001. He received Martindale-Hubbell's Preeminent rating from peers who rank him at the highest level for professional excellence for legal knowledge, communication skills and ethical standards in 2021. He earned the President's Volunteer Service Award in 2023. Dennis has been nationally featured in Black Enterprise Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Lawyer's Weekly USA and on Court TV, Snapped, Dateline NBC and the Discovery Channel.
Proven verdicts and settlements
Ellen Kelly died after latex exposure during surgery at Baptist Hospital in Jackson. A form from an earlier procedure at the same hospital already recorded her latex allergy. The jury found against the hospital and cleared the physicians, on the reasoning that the nurses and the doctors owed separate duties.
Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome. Each case is unique and depends on its own facts.