How do judges of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 2001 / Served to 2009

James G. Shaw

Judge, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

James G. Shaw was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 2001. He previously served on the Kentucky Court of Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1957 · age 69
Tenure: 2001–2009 · 8 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2000	Kentucky Court of Appeals	–	–
2001	Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Education

Auburn University
Samford University
Auburn University
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Shaw authored 253 published opinions for the court (2001–2007), plus 40 dissents and 90 concurrences. Most cited: Gavin v. State (135 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. 244 of these were attributed to Shaw 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
2003	Gavin v. State	891 So. 2d 907	135
2006	Hyde v. State	950 So. 2d 344	87
2003	McNabb v. State	887 So. 2d 929	84
2003	Lewis v. State	889 So. 2d 623	83
2001	Johnson v. State	823 So. 2d 1	78
2004	Minor v. State	914 So. 2d 372	68
2005	Washington v. State	922 So. 2d 145	64
2003	Bracknell v. State	883 So. 2d 724	64
2001	Ford v. State	831 So. 2d 641	64
2002	Duke v. State· Concurrence†	889 So. 2d 1	61
2006	Holt v. State	960 So. 2d 726	56
2004	Morrow v. State	928 So. 2d 315	53
2007	Saunders v. State†	10 So. 3d 53	48
2004	Perkins v. State· Dissent†	897 So. 2d 457	46
2005	Hodges v. State	926 So. 2d 1060	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 383 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 Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was James G. Shaw on?: James G. Shaw was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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