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

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

Colorado Court of Appeals / Joined 1986 / Served to 2011

John A. Criswell

Judge, Colorado Court of Appeals

John A. Criswell was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1986. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: 1986–2011 · 25 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1986	Colorado Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

University of Colorado Boulder
University of Colorado Boulder

Judicial Record

In our data, Criswell authored 480 published opinions for the court (1986–2011), plus 11 dissents and 20 concurrences. Most cited: People v. Moore-El (1,028 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. 175 of these were attributed to Criswell 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	People v. Moore-El	160 P.3d 393	1,028
1997	People in Interest of SEG	934 P.2d 920	519
1999	Levin v. Anouna†	990 P.2d 1136	516
1994	James H. Moore & Associates Realty, Inc. v. Arrowhead at Vail, Inc.	892 P.2d 367	371
1994	People v. Chambers	900 P.2d 1249	360
1999	Farny v. Board of Equalization of Dolores County	985 P.2d 106	340
1996	Home Health Care Professionals v. Colorado Department of Labor & Employment, Division of Employment	937 P.2d 851	332
1999	People v. Young	987 P.2d 889	271
2011	People v. Berry†	292 P.3d 954	234
1991	People v. Fell	832 P.2d 1015	219
2011	Crow v. Penrose-St. Francis Healthcare System	262 P.3d 991	199
1992	Lewis v. JC Penney Co., Inc.	841 P.2d 385	194
1998	In Re the Marriage of Mallon	956 P.2d 642	185
1994	People v. Graham· Concurrence†	876 P.2d 68	183
1996	Fox v. I-10, Ltd.†	936 P.2d 580	168

Showing the 15 most-cited of 511 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 Colorado Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John A. Criswell on?: John A. Criswell was a Judge of the Colorado Court of Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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