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

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1993 / Served to 2010

Charles S. Chapel

Judge, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

Charles S. Chapel was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1993. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1941 · age 85
Tenure: 1993–2010 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1993	Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Chapel authored 207 published opinions for the court (1993–2010), plus 61 dissents and 65 concurrences. Most cited: Simpson v. State (378 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. 169 of these were attributed to Chapel 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
1994	Simpson v. State· Dissent†	876 P.2d 690	378
2006	Hogan v. State· Dissent†	2006 OK CR 19	263
1994	Mayes v. State· Dissent†	887 P.2d 1288	194
1997	Walker v. State	933 P.2d 327	172
1993	Pickens v. State· Concurrence†	850 P.2d 328	162
1996	Parker v. State· Concurrence†	917 P.2d 980	149
1994	Mitchell v. State	884 P.2d 1186	138
1997	Hung Thanh Le v. State	947 P.2d 535	137
1993	Paxton v. State· Dissent†	867 P.2d 1309	137
1995	Valdez v. State	900 P.2d 363	129
1994	Bryson v. State· Dissent†	876 P.2d 240	125
1995	Taylor v. State	889 P.2d 319	124
2004	Lott v. State· Concurrence†	2004 OK CR 27	123
1997	Bryan v. State	935 P.2d 338	120
1994	McGregor v. State	885 P.2d 1366	119

Showing the 15 most-cited of 333 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 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Charles S. Chapel on?: Charles S. Chapel was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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