Elizabeth Pickett (judge)

Elizabeth Ann Pickett (born November 16, 1959)^[1] is a judge who has been on the Louisiana Third Circuit Court of Appeal, based in Lake Charles, since the spring of 1997. Her current term expires in 2022.

Background and career

Pickett is from the town of Many in Sabine Parish in western Louisiana, one of five children born to Judge John S. Pickett, Jr., and the former Joanne Hopkins of Many. In 1984, she received her Juris Doctor degree from Tulane University Law School in New Orleans.^[2]

From 1990 to 1997, Pickett was a judge of the Sabine Parish-based Louisiana 11th Judicial District Court. She succeeded her father, John S. Pickett, Jr., in the position upon his retirement. Pickett, Jr., had also served from 1960 to 1968 on the Sabine Parish School Board^[3] and from 1968 to 1972 in the Louisiana House of Representatives.^[4] Her grandfather, John Samuel Pickett, Sr., a native of Miller County, Arkansas, also sat on the 11th District Court before his granddaughter was born.^[2]

In a special election for the Division A seat on the state circuit court of appeal held on April 5, 1997, Pickett defeated two male candidates from both parties. The vacancy in the eight-parish seat opened when Jeannette Knoll, a Democrat from Marksville in Avoyelles Parish, was elected in 1996 to the Louisiana Supreme Court. Pickett received 15,322 votes (43.7 percent); Democrat Ned Randolph, then the mayor of Alexandria and a former member of both houses of the state legislature, trailed with 9,974 votes (28.5 percent), and a Republican, John Gutierrez McLure (born April 1946) of Woodworth in south Rapides Parish, received 9,738 (28.8 percent).^[5] Randolph declined to pursue a runoff election against Pickett, who was subsequently unopposed for two ten-year terms in 2002 and 2012.

Seven months later, in another special election held on November 15, 1997, Pickett's brother, John W. "Billy" Pickett (born February 1954), also a Democrat, sought to succeed his sister on the 11th Judicial District Court. He was narrowly defeated by Charles B. Adams, a Republican who polled 4,359 votes (52 percent) to Pickett's 4,010 ballots (48 percent).^[6]

References