Current and former judges who have served on the Mississippi Court of Appeals during the past 30 years gathered to share recollections and talk about the history of the court on Jan. 9 as they launched an anniversary celebration.

 

Gov. Tate Reeves said after a luncheon honoring the jurists, “For three decades, the Court of Appeals has played a vital and indispensable role in our state’s judiciary.”

 

Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph of Hattiesburg said that the Court of Appeals is an important component of providing timely decisions on appeal. He told early members of the Court of Appeals, “Job well done. Thank you to you pioneers.”

 

Twenty-four of the 39 judges who have served on the Court of Appeals, including all six of the still living original 10, attended some of the day’s events. The six are Supreme Court Presiding Justice Leslie D. King of Greenville, former Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals;  former Chief Judge Roger McMillin Jr. of New Albany; former Judge Thomas Coleman of Madison; former Judge and later Supreme Court Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Jackson; former Judge Mary Libby Payne of Pearl; and Judge Leslie Southwick of Jackson, now a judge of the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

 

Chief Judge Donna Barnes of Tupelo said after the luncheon, “I can assure you that we on the Court today appreciate the legacy you left to us and we strive every day to meet the standards you have set.”

 

Later, at a panel discussion in the Court of Appeals Courtroom, she noted that  the operating procedures established by the original 10 judges are still in use.

 

“We are definitely following the system that the 10…created and I think it’s been working very well….We owe you so much, the 10 originals, six remaining,” she said.

 

Barnes became the second woman to serve on the Court of Appeals when she was appointed in 2004, and the Court’s first female Chief Judge when she took that leadership role on Feb. 1, 2019. Now, half of the Court of Appeals judges are women. The most recent female jurist, Judge Amy Lassitter St. Pe’ of Pascagoula, was sworn in on Jan. 6.

 

The Mississippi Senate and House of Representatives adopted a concurrent resolution honoring the Court of Appeals on its 30th anniversary and documenting the history of the Court’s creation. Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula, who presented Senate Concurrent Resolution 501 to the Court of Appeals on Jan. 9, said the bill was the first legislation agreed upon by the two chambers during the 2025 Session.

 

Presiding Justice King, Judge Southwick and U.S. District Judge Michael P. Mills of Fulton, now a senior status judge, outlined not just the history of the court, but some colorful back stories during the afternoon panel discussion. King, Mills and Diaz all served in the Mississippi House of Representatives when the Legislature created the Court of Appeals. Mills authored the original House bill which called for creation of the Court of Appeals and the Administrative Office of Courts. Two Senate bills won final approval. But that’s getting ahead of the story.

 

Judge Southwick explained that by the 1980s, a backlog of cases began to accumulate before the Supreme Court. A backlog of 500 cases in 1982 doubled to 1,000 by 1984, and reached about 1,300 by 1990. He cited the case of a lawyer from the gulf coast who, when contacted by a news reporter about an appellate decision in his case, had to search his memory because the case had been on appeal for three years. There were more appeals than the nine-member Supreme Court could handle in a timely manner.

 

“The numbers had been growing for years and years and members of the Supreme Court had been reaching out to the Legislature on an ongoing basis talking about the difficulty in maintaining the caseload and getting things done timely, to no avail,” King said.

 

With legislatively provided funding, the Supreme Court appointed three magistrates in October 1990 to review cases and write recommendations, but the Supreme Court still had to review and decide all cases. In the 1993 legislative session, the Justices convinced the Legislature to create a whole new intermediate appellate court to address the backlog. But there still was resistance from some legislators regarding funding.

 

King said that legislation introduced in 1993 to create the Court of Appeals called for 10 judges. Both houses had approved 10. The bill went to a conference committee to work out details, and came out of conference as five judicial positions – one to be elected from each of then five congressional districts.

 

“As it turned out, the reason for those five was that (House) Appropriations Committee Chair Charlie Capps from Bolivar County … essentially said you can put as many judges in it as you want to, but Appropriations is only going to give you money for five, and that’s how we ended up with the five,” King said.

 

“Now again you have to know a little bit about the Legislature,” he added. “There is a lot of horse trading going on there. In order to get to the 10 the next year, Chairman Mills in his wisdom recognized that there was something that Chairman Capps wanted….He negotiated with Chairman Capps and got his approval to provide the five additional judges in the 1994 session.”

 

Mills, who handled the bill as Chairman of the House Judiciary A Committee, said, “The next year, Charlie Capps needed a new judge in his district, as it turned out.”

 

The Legislature studied the caseloads and needs of the trial courts across the state.

 

“We came back with a new bill that created a total of 10 judgeships for the Court of Appeals and 14 new chancery and circuit judges across the state.”

 

Mills said attorneys who put forth a tremendous effort to make the Court of Appeals a reality were Mississippi Bar President Grady Tollison; later Bar President Nina Tollison; Amy Whitten, a former Supreme Court Administrator; and Allan Alexander, who later served as U.S. Magistrate Judge.

 

“Those lawyers, those members of the Bar were very involved in everything we did and deserve as much credit as anybody else for the creation of the Court of Appeals and the Administrative Office,” he said.

 

Former House Judiciary B Chairman Ed Blackmon also was instrumental in passage, said Mills, adding, “None of this would have happened without Ed.”

 

“It was very hard for African Americans to get elected to judgeships under the districts that we had at that time and the way that the posts were set up, so we created new slots and new posts and new positions to allow people of color to also be elected judges as opposed to being appointed,” Mills said.

 

The final hurdle for creating the Court of Appeals was gaining approval of then-Gov. Kirk Fordice. Proponents feared that Fordice, who had run on a platform of creating no new programs, would veto the legislation. Mills said that he and Grady Tollison went to see the Governor.

 

“I said from a businessman’s standpoint, it is to work on the inventory, that we’ve got this inventory that’s piling up and these cases are building up and we don’t have the manpower to do it,” Mills recalled. “He understood that and he told us that he would sign the bill into law.  That’s how it happened.”

 

The legislation was signed on April 6, 1994. On Nov. 8, 1994, 10 judges were elected to the new court in non-partisan races.

 

Payne, a former law professor and Dean of Mississippi College School of Law, recalled campaigning in 19 counties and having to explain what the new court was as well as who she was.

 

“I am still convinced that getting this job is harder than doing it, although doing it is hard,” she said.

 

Diaz, who was elected from a district on the gulf coast, said, “Being elected was the second most important thing that happened to me that day.”

 

He recalled watching election results with his wife Jennifer when she said, “It’s time.” She went into labor. He recounted that as they were on the way to a hospital, the labor pains subsided and his wife said it would be all right if they stopped at the North Gulfport voting precinct to check on the vote count. He saw Rep. Frances Fredericks at the precinct.

 

“She got a purse and she hit me and she pushed me out of the precinct…and she said, ‘Get this woman to a hospital right now,’” he said.

 

“On Jan. 3, 1995, the 10 of us stood in the old Supreme Court Chamber at the Capitol and took the oath of office in a most impressive ceremony….After that impressive ceremony, we then marched over to the offices on State Street, which were, to put it charitably, not quite as impressive. As I recall each of us basically had a desk, a desk chair, probably a legal pad and a pen. And that was it,” King said.

 

The building was rented, as the old Gartin Justice Building that housed the Supreme Court had no space for a new court. There was no place to hold oral arguments before the Court of Appeals during the first few months. The building had to be remodeled to create a courtroom. The building leaked, there was mildew and there were plumbing problems.

 

The new judges had to figure out operating procedures, get to know each other and develop a working relationship.

 

Southwick said, “We had to create those relationships to understand what it meant to disagree in an agreeable fashion, to write opinions.”

 

Other judges agreed that the Court of Appeals’ members were collegial even when they disagreed. “We never got personal about disagreement, said former Judge Payne. Former Judge Jim M. Greenlee of Oxford, who retired on June 30, 2024, said, “There is nothing wrong with disagreeing. There is something wrong with disagreeing disagreeably. And this court has the ability to take all of these issues …and to sit down and decide.”

 

Judge Southwick said the mission from the inception was to speed up the process of deciding cases. “We were given deadlines…. The idea was to decide every case within 270 days as mandated by the Legislature, and we met those deadlines.”

 

A month after the judges took the oath, the Court of Appeals handed down its first batch of cases, 26 opinions. The Court of Appeals issued 525 decisions on the merits in 1995.

 

During the past 30 years, the court has issued more than 15,000 decisions on the merits.

 

“We think that has made a good dent in the caseload,” Barnes said.

 

The Court of Appeals speeded up the time it takes to finalize a decision.  In 2024, the Court of Appeals’ average time from the filing of the final appeal brief to issuance of a decision was 210 days – 60 days sooner than required.

 

“It’s a working court and I’m very proud to have been a part of it during its first decade,” said Justice David Ishee of Gulfport, who served on the Court of Appeals before moving to the Supreme Court. Four Justices are former members of the Court of Appeals.

 

Justice Ishee recalled collegiality and friendships. “About 10 months after I came on the Court, I swam out of my living room during Hurricane Katrina,” he said. “Running back and forth trying to attend to a family and build a house and being a brand new judge was not an easy period.” Colleagues on the Court stepped up to help “like family.”