Leon Cleveland Burns Jr.

Leon Cleveland Burns Jr. died suddenly on Wednesday 21 October 2026 at Cookeville Regional Medical Center in Cookeville, Tennessee. He was 90. The Herald-Citizen confirmed his death the same day, and WJLE Radio in Smithville reported it on 23 October. No cause of death was made public.

Arrangements were made by the Cookeville Chapel of Hooper, Huddleston and Horner Funeral Home. Visitation was set for Sunday 25 October from 4 to 8 p.m. at the funeral home and on Monday 26 October from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Cookeville First United Methodist Church, followed by a memorial service at 1 p.m. with the Reverend Kevin Conrad officiating.

Leon Cleveland Burns Jr. was born in Alabama in 1936. His father, Leon Cleveland Burns, was a Church of Christ preacher, and his mother was Martha Louise Harding Burns; he had three sisters, Mary, Martha and Sarah. The family moved during his childhood and he grew up in Columbia, Tennessee.

In 1954 he went to Tennessee Tech in Cookeville as a student and manager of the football team, and he graduated with a bachelor's degree in business in 1959. He then spent a couple of years in the United States Army.

Back in Cookeville he went to work for Joe Adams of Adams Plastics, a sporting goods manufacturer that later became Adams USA. He later recalled that the company basically operated out of Adams's garage and den, where they boxed, shipped and made football helmet face masks. He then became administrator of what was then Cookeville General Hospital, but staying in that field would have meant an advanced degree and moving around the country. "I wanted to stay in Cookeville, which is a beautiful, wonderful place to live," he said. "So I thought, what can I do to make a living and live in Cookeville? That's why I went to law school."

He entered the University of Tennessee College of Law at 33, was on its Outstanding Appellate Argument Team in 1970 and graduated in 1972. After three years in practice in Cookeville he was appointed by the governor in April 1975 to sit temporarily in place of Criminal Court Judge Hillard Roberts of Livingston, who was ill. He was called back a few months later, and when Roberts retired in 1977 Burns stayed on. He was elected in 1978 to fill the unexpired term and re-elected for full eight year terms in 1982, 1990, 1998 and 2006, each time unopposed. He was one of two criminal court judges for the seven county 13th Judicial District.

Soon after taking the bench he presided over a death penalty case concerning the killing of a child by his stepfather. He ruled that marital privilege, which normally prevents one spouse testifying against the other, did not apply where a child had been harmed, and allowed the child's mother to testify for the state. The ruling was affirmed and, he said in 2013, was still cited as authority for that exception. Over the decades he watched the caseload change, especially with the rise of prescription painkiller abuse, and spoke of labouring over sentences to balance punishment with the chance of rehabilitation.

He served as president of the Tennessee Judicial Conference (1988 to 1989), trial judge representative on the Tennessee Sentencing Commission (1986 to 1995), a member of the Tennessee Commission for Criminal Justice (1982 to 1983) and of the Tennessee Supreme Court Advisory Commission on Rules of Criminal Procedure (1989 to 2000), and taught criminal justice as an adjunct professor at Tennessee Tech from 1989 to 2000. He retired on 31 August 2014 at the end of his term and was succeeded by Gary McKenzie. In retirement he continued to serve as a judicial outreach liaison for the Tennessee Highway Safety Office, which gave him its Director's Award in August 2022.

Burns made his home in Cookeville for most of his adult life. In 2013 he said that in retirement he looked forward to more hiking holidays in Europe and in national parks with his wife, Julie, as they had enjoyed for several years.

For almost four decades Burns was the face of criminal justice in the Upper Cumberland, hearing cases from seven counties and never drawing an election opponent. His advice to his successor summed up how he saw the job: "Be careful that you don't think too highly of yourself and get carried away with your position. Treat people with the respect that anybody's entitled to, regardless of who they are and what they've done." His ruling on marital privilege in child harm cases became a lasting part of Tennessee criminal law, and his work on the sentencing commission and the criminal procedure rules shaped practice across the state.