How do judges of the Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?

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

Missouri Court of Appeals / Joined 2009 / Active

Cynthia L. Martin

Judge, Missouri Court of Appeals

Cynthia L. Martin is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals, serving since 2009. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1959 · age 67
Tenure: Since 2009 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2009	Missouri Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

William Jewell College

Judicial Record

In our data, Martin authored 487 published opinions for the court (1978–2025), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: Hester v. Barnett (81 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. 228 of these were attributed to Martin 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
1987	Hester v. Barnett	723 S.W.2d 544	81
2014	Baier v. Darden Restaurants†	420 S.W.3d 733	53
2010	Frye v. Speedway Chevrolet Cadillac†	321 S.W.3d 429	53
2014	Gail & Darrell Mansfield v. Caleb Horner & John Horner	443 S.W.3d 627	37
2011	Whitworth v. McBRIDE & SON HOMES, INC.†	344 S.W.3d 730	36
2010	State v. Gaines†	316 S.W.3d 440	36
2016	State of Missouri v. Tawanda Kunonga	490 S.W.3d 746	35
1978	Gambrell v. Kansas City Chiefs Football Club, Inc.	562 S.W.2d 163	35
2012	STRCUE, Inc. v. Potts†	386 S.W.3d 214	34
2010	Cherco v. State†	309 S.W.3d 819	34
2013	Goudeaux v. Board of Police Commissioners†	409 S.W.3d 508	32
2011	Thiemann v. Columbia Public School District†	338 S.W.3d 835	32
2011	SATURN OF TIFFANY SPRINGS v. McDARIS†	331 S.W.3d 704	31
2016	State of Missouri v. Marion Clyde Ellis†	512 S.W.3d 816	30
2013	State v. Peal†	393 S.W.3d 621	30

Showing the 15 most-cited of 488 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 Missouri Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Cynthia L. Martin on?: Cynthia L. Martin is a Judge of the Missouri Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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