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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1967 / Served to 1988

John Frank Onion Jr.

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

John Frank Onion Jr. was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1967. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1925 · age 101
Tenure: 1967–1988 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1967	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Onion authored 1,478 published opinions for the court (1967–1988), plus 163 dissents and 187 concurrences. Most cited: High v. State (9,430 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. 833 of these were attributed to Onion 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
1978	High v. State†	573 S.W.2d 807	9,430
1985	Almanza v. State· Concurrence†	686 S.W.2d 157	6,557
1969	Gainous v. State	436 S.W.2d 137	4,068
1974	Currie v. State	516 S.W.2d 684	2,837
1988	Rose v. State· Concurrence†	752 S.W.2d 529	647
1981	Penagraph v. State	623 S.W.2d 341	563
1987	Gardner v. State· Concurrence†	730 S.W.2d 675	509
1988	Ex Parte Axel· Concurrence†	757 S.W.2d 369	464
1988	Reed v. State	744 S.W.2d 112	437
1985	McGoldrick v. State	682 S.W.2d 573	433
1988	Allridge v. State	762 S.W.2d 146	429
1987	Drew v. State	743 S.W.2d 207	420
1980	Dinnery v. State· Separate†	592 S.W.2d 343	416
1982	Bowden v. State	628 S.W.2d 782	404
1978	Ex Parte Granviel	561 S.W.2d 503	401

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,917 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 Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was John Frank Onion Jr. on?: John Frank Onion Jr. was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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