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79 Chapter 8 The Attorney General and the Rule of Law . . . before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. —Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird William McMillan Leech Jr. was the son of a judge, and though his career centered in the urban state capital of Nashville, throughout his life he was firmly rooted in the more rural counties beyond the city. He was born in 1935 in the small town of Charlotte, just west of Nashville in Dickson County. The Leech family was politically connected to the Clement family—Governor Frank Clement was born in the same county, in the larger town also called Dickson—and Bill’s father, William M. Leech Sr., had served on the governor’s cabinet as head of the Tennessee Department of Highways before his judicial career began. Bill Jr. was the second of two children. He and his brother, Earl Warren Leech, fourteen months older, were both athletes and played together on the same football teams at Charlotte High School and at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville. Bill attended Tech on an athletic scholarship and was a standout player. He was recruited by the Chicago Bears but declined the offer. He worked summer jobs in Tennessee and Mississippi driving trucks and bulldozers for an asphalt paving company. After graduation he joined the US Army and was posted in Germany. When his tour of duty ended, he worked as a teacher and high school football coach. After this, he entered law school at the University of Tennessee, in Knoxville. One of his classmates at the UT law school was T. Edward Sisk, the same Eddie Sisk who would later serve Governor Ray Blanton as his staff legal counsel. (Earl, unlike his father and brother, chose the military for his career, not the legal profession. He was an officer in the Korean conflict, served two tours in Vietnam, and later was aide-de-camp to General William West­ 80 COUP moreland when he was commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Earl retired from the army in 1978, with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and had a twenty-year career as a banker in Nashville.) After finishing law school in 1966, Bill Leech made his home in the small unincorporated village of Santa Fe (pronounced “Santa fee”) near Columbia , the county seat of Maury County, south of Nashville, the “Mule Capital of the World.” His first job was as an assistant district attorney under District Attorney Arnold Peebles. Leech and Peebles’ son then established their own law firm. Leech also served as a municipal judge in Columbia. He later formed a second law firm with Tom Hardin and Bob Knolton. Leech became respected both as a lawyer and civic leader; he was president of the Maury County Bar Association and the county Chamber of Commerce. In his private practice, he represented, among other clients, the Tennessee Farm Bureau. In 1971, Leech was elected to represent Maury County as a delegate to the state constitutional convention in Nashville. Once there, he was elected its president. The primary issue was property tax reform, specifically the reordering of property tax assessments based on use. This had been a policy priority of Leech’s longtime client, the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. Some at the time referred to the 1971 convention as “the Farm Bureau Convention ,” and indeed it produced an amendment to the state’s constitution, called Proposition 1, that gave farm property the lowest percentage classification for assessment of taxes. In 1974, Leech was one of several lawyers across Tennessee who assisted in the extraordinary statewide campaign of five Democratic nominees to the Tennessee Supreme Court. The candidates were Ray Brock, Robert Cooper, incumbent justice William H. D. Fones, William Harbison, and Joe Henry. They largely eschewed political fundraising, but they had the political guidance of Speaker Ned McWherter. Their team approach proved successful, and the Democratic slate was elected in August of that year. Three years later, Leech was elected to the 1977 constitutional convention. It was a much briefer affair, but one significant amendment the delegates approved was to permit a governor to succeed himself and serve a total of two consecutive four-year terms. (This provision would become applicable to the current governor, meaning Governor Blanton would be the first to be eligible to do this.) When this convention adjourned...

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