Jamaican-American is new Superior Court Judge in Clayton County

Jewel Scott

​Jewel Scott has become the first Jamaican-American to win a seat as Superior Court Judge in Clayton County, Georgia.

Clayton County voters ousted Superior Court Judge Kathryn “Katie” Powers, choosing opponent Jewel Scott with 60% of the votes. Scott previously served as Clayton County’s first female and first Caribbean-American District Attorney in 2005.  In 2016, she narrowly lost a race for the superior court. 

​Jewel Scott was born in Manchester, Jamaica, and spent her early years in Hanover where she attended Bethel Primary School in Hopewell and Montego Bay and Manchester High School. She graduated from Norman Manley Law School, University of the West Indies, Mona, and worked at the Fair Trading Commission in Jamaica before immigrating to the U.S. where she earned her J.D. at Mercer University’s Walter F. George School of Law in Macon, Georgia and joined the State Bar of Georgia in 2001.

Scott has over 30 years of experience in civil and criminal law and was an attorney and a managing partner in the Scott and Turner Law Group, LLC. She has been active in the community for many years and has received numerous civic and professional accolades and awards. She started a Clayton County Chapter of Boys to Men and received a Distinguished Community Service Award for the Rainbow Push Coalition. 
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Scott is the recipient of an award for her professional commitment to families, schools and community from the Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Atlanta Field Division. Scott has been recognized for her work by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Association of Battered Women of Clayton County; Parents of Murdered Children; and Georgia Department of Human Resources/Child Abuse Review Board. Scott is also Georgia’s Honorary Consul to Jamaica.

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