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

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

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1947 / Served to 1963

John Anderson Brett

Judge, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

John Anderson Brett was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1947. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1897–1974
Tenure: 1947–1963 · 16 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1947	Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Education

Oklahoma Baptist University
University of Oklahoma-Norman Campus

Judicial Record

In our data, Brett authored 723 published opinions for the court (1947–1963), plus 11 concurrences. Most cited: Henderson v. State (97 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. 642 of these were attributed to Brett 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
1951	Henderson v. State†	230 P.2d 495	97
1962	Williams v. State	373 P.2d 91	84
1961	Tarter v. State	359 P.2d 596	83
1952	Toms v. State†	239 P.2d 812	78
1947	Ex Parte Lewis†	188 P.2d 367	61
1948	Lowrey v. State†	197 P.2d 637	58
1961	Pate v. State	361 P.2d 1086	54
1962	Bell v. State	381 P.2d 167	47
1949	Doser v. State†	203 P.2d 451	47
1960	Brigman v. State	350 P.2d 321	46
1950	Fry v. State†	218 P.2d 643	45
1956	Carter v. State†	292 P.2d 435	41
1962	Carter v. State	376 P.2d 351	40
1960	Townley v. State· Separate†	355 P.2d 420	38
1951	Stevens v. State†	232 P.2d 949	37

Showing the 15 most-cited of 741 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 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John Anderson Brett on?: John Anderson Brett was a Judge of the Oklahoma 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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16 years on the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).