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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Court of Appeals of Washington / Joined 2007 / Served to 2008

Debra L. Stephens

Judge, Court of Appeals of Washington

Debra L. Stephens was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington, who joined the court in 2007. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 2007–2008 · 1 yr

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2007	Court of Appeals of Washington	–	–

Education

Gonzaga University
Gonzaga University

Judicial Record

In our data, Stephens authored 34 published opinions for the court (2007–2008), plus 1 dissent. Most cited: State v. Duckett (57 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. 18 of these were attributed to Stephens 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
2007	State v. Duckett	173 P.3d 948	57
2007	State v. Duckett†	141 Wash. App. 797	56
2007	Davis v. West One Automotive Group†	140 Wash. App. 449	42
2007	Zink v. City of Mesa†	140 Wash. App. 328	41
2007	Davis v. West One Automotive Group	166 P.3d 807	40
2007	State v. Wilson†	141 Wash. App. 597	30
2007	State v. Halsey	165 P.3d 409	28
2007	State v. Halsey†	140 Wash. App. 313	28
2007	State v. Wilson	171 P.3d 501	27
2008	State v. Babcock	185 P.3d 1213	24
2008	State v. Babcock†	145 Wash. App. 157	24
2007	State v. Laramie	169 P.3d 859	22
2008	State v. Prado	181 P.3d 901	21
2008	State v. Prado†	144 Wash. App. 227	21
2007	State v. Laramie†	141 Wash. App. 332	21

Showing the 15 most-cited of 35 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 Washington reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Debra L. Stephens on?: Debra L. Stephens was a Judge of the Court of Appeals of Washington.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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