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December 27, 2016
Newly elected Mississippi Court of Appeals Judge Latrice Westbrooks will take the oath of office at 9:30 a.m. Jan. 3, 2017. Chief Judge L. Joseph Lee will administer the oath of office in the first floor Courtroom at the Gartin Justice Building in Jackson.
Judge Westbrooks will hold a formal investiture ceremony Feb. 1 at 3 p.m. at the Gartin Justice Building in Jackson.
Judge Westbrooks, 44, of Lexington, was elected Nov. 8 to Court of Appeals District 2, Position 2. The 24-county district runs from Tunica County in the north to Jefferson County in the south, and reaches east to parts of Attala, Grenada, Leake and Montgomery counties.
Judge Westbrooks was born in Memphis. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn. She earned a law degree from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in 1997. She was admitted to the Mississippi Bar that same year.
She became an assistant district attorney in the Second Circuit District of Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties in October 1997. She was the first African American woman assistant district attorney in the Second Circuit District. She joined the Jackson law firm of Byrd and Associates in 2000, then opened her own law practice in 2001. She served as prosecutor for the city of Durant and as city attorney for the town of Isola. For almost 10 years, she served as a public defender in Holmes County. In 2013, she became interim communications director for Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, then joined the Jackson City Attorney’s office as legal counsel for the Jackson Police Department. She returned to private law practice in 2014. She served as Municipal Judge for the city of Lexington before she was elected to the Court of Appeals.
Judge Westbrooks served as a Southeast Regional and Central Director of the Magnolia Bar Association. She previously chaired the Criminal Justice Committee for the State Conference of the NAACP. She is a member of the Mississippi Bar, National Bar Association, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the Capital Area Bar Association and the Metro Jackson Black Women Lawyers Association. Prior to her election to the Court of Appeals, she was a member of the Mississippi Association of Justice and the Mississippi Public Defenders Association. She is a life member of the NAACP, past board member of Leadership Greater Jackson Alumnae, past board member of the I.S. Sanders YMCA, and past board member of the National African American Student Leadership Conference.
