Lewisburg City Council offered thanks to Dr. Coy Flowers and Reverends Chris Thompson and Stephen Baldwin at the council meeting on Tuesday, June 7, for their service presentation to help local citizenry bring closure and peace after news of the devastating massacre in Orlando, Florida, which left 49 people dead. The ceremony was held at the Green Space in Lewisburg on Thursday evening, June 16, and was attended by a large gathering of locals in spite of a heavy rain downpour.
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Jennifer P. Dent was sworn in as circuit judge on Friday, June 17, in a ceremony in the Greenbrier County Courtroom in Lewisburg by Senior Status Judge James J. Rowe, as family members and a packed courtroom looked on. Dent, who most recently served as Greenbrier County Assistant Prosecutor, will fill the seat vacated by Rowe’s retirement. Elected on May 10, to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit, serving Greenbrier and Pocahontas counties, her term begins January 1, 2017. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin appointed her to the seat to serve the remainder of Rowe’s term. She began hearing court cases on Tuesday, June 21.
Dent is a native of Lewisburg. She has a 1983 bachelor’s degree in business from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a 1986 law degree from the Cumberland School of Law. She returned to West Virginia in 1993, and was an assistant prosecutor in Summers County and an assistant prosecutor in Monroe County. From 2002 until her appointment to the bench, she was an assistant prosecutor in Greenbrier County. In that role, she prosecuted child abuse and neglect, juvenile delinquency and juvenile status offenses, and misdemeanor and felony cases.
