How do judges of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1969 / Served to 1977

Aubrey Marion Cates Jr.

Judge, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

Aubrey Marion Cates Jr. was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1909–1977
Tenure: 1969–1977 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Louisville

Judicial Record

In our data, Cates authored 326 published opinions for the court (1969–1987), plus 20 dissents and 47 concurrences. Most cited: Radke v. State (53 citations).

Published, precedential opinions from the CourtListener corpus. Counts and rankings are objective and recomputable: how we count. We describe the record, not the judge. 265 of these were attributed to Cates by a unique court-, date-, and surname-match against our roster (marked ), because CourtListener recorded no author for them. Each links to the official text to verify. How we match.

Selected opinions

Year	Case	Citation	Cited
1973	Radke v. State	293 So. 2d 312	53
1972	Payne v. State· Separate†	265 So. 2d 185	53
1971	Dannelly v. State	254 So. 2d 434	42
1974	State Ex Rel. Baxley v. Strawbridge	296 So. 2d 779	41
1973	Bills v. State· Concurrence†	275 So. 2d 706	40
1971	Jenkins v. State	248 So. 2d 758	37
1970	Martin v. State	241 So. 2d 339	37
1975	English v. State· Concurrence†	325 So. 2d 211	35
1972	Harnage v. State· Concurrence†	274 So. 2d 333	33
1972	Buckelew v. State	265 So. 2d 195	33
1970	Oliver v. State· Concurrence†	238 So. 2d 916	31
1975	Woods v. State	310 So. 2d 891	30
1973	Kilpatrick v. State· Concurrence†	285 So. 2d 516	30
1976	Kirkland v. State	340 So. 2d 1139	28
1973	Mathis v. State	296 So. 2d 755	27

Showing the 15 most-cited of 399 authored opinions in our data. “Cited” is inbound citations across the CourtListener corpus. Case links open the ruling’s full text (CourtListener) or its page here; read the methodology and verify against the primary source.

Questions & answers

How do judges of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Aubrey Marion Cates Jr. on?: Aubrey Marion Cates Jr. was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

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8 years on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).