Parks White will be the new district attorney for the five-county Northern Judicial Circuit, which includes Madison County.
White defeated longtime incumbent Bob Lavender in the Tuesday Republican Primary, winning four of the five counties in the circuit, including Madison County, where he received 3,056 votes (53.46 percent) to Lavender’s 2,660 (46.54 percent). White won the circuit with 55 percent of the vote — 9,952 to 8,142. Lavender’s lone win was in Elbert County, where he resides.
The new district attorney, who does not have Democratic opposition in November, thanked the citizens of the circuit, saying he is “so honored to have their support and their votes.”
“I look forward to serving them and making the community safer,” said White.
He also thanked those who worked for him during the campaign.
“It was a hard-fought battle by a team of great volunteers,” said White. “We’re an all volunteer campaign. The people that rallied behind the cause, I can’t thank them enough for what they’ve done. They saw the issues with the current administration and the need for it to change — for swift justice to be restored to the Northern Judicial Circuit.”
White, a Hart County resident, said he will spend the next five months commuting to his current job in Augusta as lead assistant district attorney for Judge James G. Blanchard, Jr. He has prosecuted hundreds of cases in Augusta and returned guilty verdicts in all of his 11 jury trials since returning from Iraq, where he served with the Law and Order Task Force, embedded with Special Forces as a liaison between them and members of the Iraqi judiciary. He helped move high-level terrorism suspects into prosecution in the Iraqi judicial system.
White said he will transfer aspects of the Augusta system to the Northern Judicial Circuit.
“I will work to make sure that I know every detail from the intake process through the appeals process, every facet of the way we function in our office,” said White. “So we will use that model to improve the office here.”
The new district attorney said Wednesday morning that he planned to call Lavender and request a meeting with his staff.
“I’m going to call Mr. Lavender this morning and ask him for an opportunity to meet with the staff, and if he’ll allow me, what I intend to do is go in and tell them all that they’ll have a job if they want it,” said White. “But they’re going to have to work under new leadership with new rules, and they’re going to be working harder than they ever have before.”
Lavender’s tenure as DA stretched from 1996 to 2012. White will take office Jan. 1, 2013.
This man has no experience and is far to over zealous with intent on making a name for himself.
His ideals of swift justice are how innocent people go to jail. When its you that is that person and you may very well be you wont like him so much then I bet. True justice means nothing to him only a conviction rate for his future aspirations of higher office.