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 1949 / Served to 1961

John C. Powell

Judge, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

John C. Powell was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1949. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1894 · age 132
Tenure: 1949–1961 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1949	Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Powell authored 549 published opinions for the court (1949–1961), plus 2 dissents and 13 concurrences. Most cited: Traxler v. State (85 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. 526 of these were attributed to Powell 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
1952	Traxler v. State†	251 P.2d 815	85
1953	Brinegar v. State†	262 P.2d 464	66
1952	Williams v. State†	240 P.2d 1132	40
1951	Mott v. State†	232 P.2d 166	39
1955	Application of Poston†	281 P.2d 776	38
1950	Martin v. State	222 P.2d 534	36
1957	Duckworth v. State· Concurrence†	309 P.2d 1103	35
1950	Ex Parte Houston†	224 P.2d 281	35
1959	Samples v. State†	337 P.2d 756	34
1960	Disheroon v. State	357 P.2d 236	33
1955	Wing v. State†	280 P.2d 740	32
1955	Berryman v. State· Separate†	283 P.2d 558	31
1950	Hilyard v. State†	214 P.2d 953	30
1949	Wilson v. State†	212 P.2d 144	30
1959	Denney v. State	346 P.2d 359	29

Showing the 15 most-cited of 565 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 C. Powell on?: John C. Powell 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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12 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).