How do judges of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of North Carolina / Joined 2010 / Served to 2012

Cressie H. Thigpen Jr.

Judge, Court of Appeals of North Carolina

Cressie H. Thigpen Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina, who joined the court in 2010. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1946 · age 80
Tenure: 2010–2012 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2010	Court of Appeals of North Carolina	–	–

Education

Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Judicial Record

In our data, Thigpen authored 52 published opinions for the court (2011–2012), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Williams v. Peabody (43 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. 27 of these were attributed to Thigpen 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
2011	Williams v. Peabody†	217 N.C. App. 1	43
2012	Pierce v. Atlantic Group, Inc.†	219 N.C. App. 19	38
2012	In re Whatley†	224 N.C. App. 267	25
2011	State v. LEYSHON	710 S.E.2d 282	23
2012	State v. Barnett†	223 N.C. App. 65	21
2011	State v. Wright	711 S.E.2d 797	19
2012	Garrett v. Burris†	224 N.C. App. 32	16
2012	Heritage Operating, L.P. v. N.C. Propane Exchange, LLC	727 S.E.2d 311	14
2011	State v. Wright	708 S.E.2d 112	14
2012	State v. Daniels†	224 N.C. App. 608	13
2012	State v. Cornell†	222 N.C. App. 184	12
2011	State v. Whetstone	711 S.E.2d 778	12
2012	State v. Boyett†	224 N.C. App. 102	10
2012	State v. Frederick†	222 N.C. App. 576	10
2012	Miller v. SZILAGYI	726 S.E.2d 873	10

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 Court of Appeals of North Carolina reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was Cressie H. Thigpen Jr. on?: Cressie H. Thigpen Jr. was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of North Carolina.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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