How do judges of the Supreme Court of Indiana reach the bench?

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1967 / Served to 1985

Donald H. Hunter

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Donald H. Hunter was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana (5 judges, selected by merit selection with retention), who joined the court in 1967. He previously served on the Indiana Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1911–1991
Tenure: 1967–1985 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1963	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–
1967	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Education

Lincoln University

Judicial Record

In our data, Hunter authored 984 published opinions for the court (1963–1985), plus 70 dissents and 51 concurrences. Most cited: Frampton v. Central Indiana Gas Company (448 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. 248 of these were attributed to Hunter 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	Frampton v. Central Indiana Gas Company	297 N.E.2d 425	448
1975	Pirtle v. State· Concurrence†	323 N.E.2d 634	210
1972	Ashton v. Anderson	279 N.E.2d 210	210
1973	Skendzel v. Marshall	301 N.E.2d 641	189
1976	Vernon Fire & Casualty Insurance Co. v. Sharp	349 N.E.2d 173	181
1977	Huff v. Travelers Indemnity Co.	363 N.E.2d 985	168
1971	Langley v. State	267 N.E.2d 538	159
1985	Alfaro v. State	478 N.E.2d 670	145
1969	Gaddis v. State	251 N.E.2d 658	142
1979	Zickefoose v. State	388 N.E.2d 507	140
1979	Gardner v. State	388 N.E.2d 513	134
1973	Ayr-Way Stores, Inc. v. Chitwood Ex Rel. Chitwood	300 N.E.2d 335	134
1973	State v. Rankin	294 N.E.2d 604	127
1970	Graham v. State	255 N.E.2d 652	126
1981	Perez v. United States Steel Corp.	426 N.E.2d 29	120

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,107 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 Supreme Court of Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Donald H. Hunter on?: Donald H. Hunter was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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