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

The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.

Supreme Court of Kentucky / Joined 1983 / Served to 2006

Donald C. Wintersheimer

Justice, Supreme Court of Kentucky

Donald C. Wintersheimer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, who joined the court in 1983. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1931 · age 95
Tenure: 1983–2006 · 23 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1983	Supreme Court of Kentucky	–	–

Education

Thomas More College

Judicial Record

In our data, Wintersheimer authored 351 published opinions for the court (1983–2006), plus 267 dissents and 59 concurrences. Most cited: Commonwealth v. Benham (794 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. 452 of these were attributed to Wintersheimer 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
1991	Commonwealth v. Benham	816 S.W.2d 186	794
2003	Moore v. Asente· Concurrence†	110 S.W.3d 336	469
2006	Martin v. Commonwealth· Concurrence†	207 S.W.3d 1	437
1983	Commonwealth v. Sawhill	660 S.W.2d 3	310
1989	Rose v. Council for Better Education, Inc.· Concurrence†	790 S.W.2d 186	284
1985	Paramount Foods, Inc. v. Burkhardt	695 S.W.2d 418	273
1988	Sanborn v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	754 S.W.2d 534	228
1984	Craft v. Rice	671 S.W.2d 247	190
1999	Springer v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	998 S.W.2d 439	185
1999	United Parcel Service Co. v. Rickert	996 S.W.2d 464	184
1991	James Graham Brown Foundation, Inc. v. St. Paul Fire & Marine Insurance Co.	814 S.W.2d 273	179
1994	Bell v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	875 S.W.2d 882	177
1998	Yeoman v. Com., Health Policy Bd.· Dissent†	983 S.W.2d 459	172
1985	Skaggs v. Commonwealth	694 S.W.2d 672	136
1991	Montgomery v. Commonwealth· Dissent†	819 S.W.2d 713	135

Showing the 15 most-cited of 677 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 Kentucky reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is nonpartisan election.
Which court was Donald C. Wintersheimer on?: Donald C. Wintersheimer was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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