[3] Reeves was the first person in his family to attend a four-year college,[3] and graduated in 1986 magna cum laude from Jackson State University.

"[9] On February 10, 2015, Reeves sentenced three young white men for their roles in the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson.

[11] In handing down sentences of between 7 and 50 years in prison for the defendants, Reeves gave a widely publicized[3] speech that remarked on how the killing of Anderson fit into Mississippi's "tortured past" of lynchings and racism.

[14] On September 8, 2016, Reeves issued a ruling dismissing a lawsuit seeking to have the Mississippi state flag, which contains the Stars and Bars emblem of the Confederacy declared unconstitutional.

The basis of the dismissal is the plaintiff's failure to allege a specific injury and thus an inability to demonstrate the standing necessary to bring an action in federal court.

His ruling included strong statements about the law, calling it "pure gaslighting" as well as an unconstitutional limitation on women's due-process rights.

In October 2020, shortly after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, the Attorney General for Mississippi filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the ruling.

[19] The Court granted certiorari to the petition on May 17, 2021, limiting the case to the single question "Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional."

[20] Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signed a law scheduled to go into effect on July 1, 2019, that would ban abortions later than six weeks of pregnancy.

[20] On August 4, 2020, Reeves wrote an opinion upholding the grant of qualified immunity in a case against a Richland, Mississippi police officer.

[23] The opinion stated that the two-hour traffic stop of Clarence Jamison by Officer Nick McClendon should have resulted in a Fourth Amendment violation, but he was limited to uphold prior decisions by the US Supreme Court.

In real life it operates like absolute immunity.On March 23, 2023, Reeves issued a lengthy opinion holding that the City of Jackson had violated the due process rights of over 1,000 children by intentionally misleading them to consume lead contaminated water.

The opinion is a critique of both the Supreme Court's expansion of Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen and originalism.

[31][32] On May 11, 2022, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Reeves to serve as a member of the United States Sentencing Commission.