Gov. Tate Reeves stood before a slate of new faces ready to take the bench on Mississippi’s two highest courts Monday and told them he hopes to look back on the day as a defining moment for not only their personal successes but the state’s judicial system as a whole.
“This court is a special body and the role that you play here on the Mississippi Supreme Court, and the role that you all play on the Court of Appeals, is integral to our success as a state,” Reeves said during a ceremony at the Gartin Justice Building in Jackson.
Of those who took the oath of office were Jenifer Branning and Mike Sullivan. The two are the latest to be voted on to the Mississippi Supreme Court after unseating incumbents during the November elections.
Branning, a former Republican state senator from Neshoba County, defeated incumbent Justice Jim Kitchens in a close runoff for a spot on the bench representing the central part of the state. She used the campaign trail to categorize herself as a “constitutional conservative” seeking the nonpartisan position while Kitchens attempted to remain steadfast in his reputation as a centrist judge.
Sullivan, on the other hand, knocked off Justice Dawn Beam in the state’s southern district with relative ease during the general election. The son of late Presiding Justice Michael Sullivan ran a campaign focused on his experience in three levels of the legal system. A former prosecutor, Sullivan is a Gulfport-based attorney who has served as a municipal judge in neighboring D’Iberville.
With Beam departing from the bench, Branning took her place as the only female justice on the nine-member Supreme Court.
Joining Justices Branning and Sullivan in being sworn in was Josiah D. Coleman as presiding justice – a role formerly held by Kitchens – along with Justices Jimmy Maxwell and Bobby Chamberlin. Maxwell and Chamberlin were unopposed as incumbents on their way to new, eight-year terms.
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The state’s second-highest court, the Mississippi Court of Appeals, saw new Judge Amy St. Pe’ sworn in while Presiding Judge Jack Wilson and Judge Latrice Westbrooks retook the oath of office after running unopposed in their respective districts as incumbents.
St. Pe’, a longtime Moss Point city attorney and Gautier municipal judge, convincingly won a runoff against Mississippi Chancery Court Judge Jennifer Schloegel after Judge Joel Smith decided not to seek reelection for the spot on the bench representing the state’s coastal and Pine Belt regions. St. Pe’ even donned Smith’s robe, with his blessing, when swearing to uphold the basis of equal justice under the law.
Like the Supreme Court, members of the Appeals Court are elected to eight-year terms. With both being appellate courts, the Appeals Court hears cases assigned by the Supreme Court.
