Judge Harper gave a great presentation on his 18+ years on the Lee County Circuit Court bench. He was born and raised here, as well as graduated from Auburn University. He practiced law in Mobile and Birmingham before coming back to our court system. He will be retiring the end of December and will join the law firm of Haygood, Cleveland and Pierce.

Imagine the number of attorneys doubling in his time on the bench and the yellow page ads expanding from just a half page page to 16 full pages today. He read a few letters from jailed inmates and said 75 percent of our local cases are related to drugs and alcohol.

When he took office in 1986 there were only democrats in our court positions, whereas today he is the only democrat elected to serve on the bench. He was proud of his efforts to eliminate any backlogs for cases and said today’s greatest problem was waiting on forensic evidence, which is taking two years to receive.