Sweeney studied law at the
University of Nottingham under
Sir John Cyril Smith. He was
called to the bar in 1976 at the
Middle Temple, where he was made a
bencher in 1997, that same year he was appointed First Senior Prosecuting Counsel to the Crown, and was appointed
Queen's Counsel in 2000. He was appointed to the High Court (
Queen's Bench) in September 2008. Prior to being appointed a High Court judge, Sweeney was a
barrister in the
United Kingdom, practising from 6 King's Bench Walk and specialising in terrorism, official secrets, murder and major health and safety trials. He prosecuted a number of notable criminal trials, including the perpetrators of the
1984 IRA Brighton bombing and the
attempted bombings of 21 July 2005, Neo-Nazi terrorist
David Copeland and murderers
Michael Stone and
Kamel Bourgass. Sweeney was appointed Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit in 2012, and the Judge in Charge of the Terrorism List in 2013. He was also the Judge responsible for European Liaison in relation to criminal law issues, and was a member of the Judges’ Council. He presided over
the trial in February and March 2013 of former
Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne MP and his former wife,
Vicky Pryce, for
perverting the course of justice contrary to
common law. He sentenced another MP,
Denis MacShane, to six months in prison for false accounting in the aftermath of the
2009 parliamentary expenses scandal. He presided over and was sentencing judge in high-profile cases involving terrorists and extremists, such as the two men responsible for the
murder of Lee Rigby in 2013, the man convicted of the murder of MP
David Amess and
White supremacist bomber
Pavlo Lapshyn He was also involved in numerous other high profile cases. He was the presiding judge in the trial of
Rolf Harris for various counts of indecent assault dating back to the 1960s. He was the sentencing judge for the
murder of Sabina Nessa, sentencing Koci Selemaj to a minimum of 36 years in prison. He was also the presiding judge in the
Essex lorry deaths trials where 39
Vietnamese people were killed in the back of a lorry; four perpetrators received a combined 92 years in prison. Sweeney is also an associate professor at the School of Law at Nottingham University. ==Notable cases==