Dan M. Lee

[2] Born in Petal, Forrest County, Mississippi, to Buford Aaron Lee and Pherbia Anna Camp Lee, he graduated from Petal High School in 1944,[3] and served as a pilot in the United States Navy during World War II, beginning his training as an aerial gunner at the naval air base in Jacksonville, Florida in 1944.

[7] Lee was a county judge, and a state circuit judge for Hinds and Yazoo Counties,[3] In 1979, he heavily criticized the Ross Barnett Reservoir, following a flood which caused heavy damage in Jackson, Mississippi, unsuccessfully seeking to have the county initiate a grand jury investigation into the matter, and also seeking, again unsuccessfully, to persuade the jurisdictions involved to withhold payments due to the water supply district.

[8] This involvement was raised as an issue when Lee ran for a seat on the state supreme court in 1980, as a Democrat seeking to succeed retiring justice Stokes Robertson Jr., but Lee handily defeated his Republican opponent, James Arden Barnett.

[5] He succeeded Armis E. Hawkins as chief justice in November 1995, with the expectation that Lee would being "a more conservative philosophy to the court's highest post", and would "push the court more in that direction — pro-family, pro-business, pro-death penalty, pro-tort reform".

[10] Lee declined to run for reelection in 1997, choosing to retire from the court at the beginning of the 1998 term.