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

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

Indiana Court of Appeals / Joined 1991 / Served to 2008

John Trent Sharpnack

Judge, Indiana Court of Appeals

John Trent Sharpnack was a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, who joined the court in 1991. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1933 · age 93
Tenure: 1991–2008 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1991	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Sharpnack authored 816 published opinions for the court (1991–2012), plus 31 dissents and 23 concurrences. Most cited: Sanders v. State (146 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. 143 of these were attributed to Sharpnack 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
2005	Sanders v. State	825 N.E.2d 952	146
2004	In Re Termination of Relationship of DD	804 N.E.2d 258	125
2003	Washington v. State	784 N.E.2d 584	119
1991	Scott v. Bodor, Inc.	571 N.E.2d 313	119
2002	GKC Indiana Theatres, Inc. v. Elk Retail Investors, LLC.	764 N.E.2d 647	102
2007	Involuntary Termination of Parentchild Relationship of B.R. v. Miami County Department of Child Services	875 N.E.2d 369	101
1999	Fox v. State	717 N.E.2d 957	90
1997	Mitchell v. Stevenson	677 N.E.2d 551	84
1999	Carswell v. State	721 N.E.2d 1255	78
2006	Hite v. Vanderburgh County Office of Family & Children	845 N.E.2d 175	70
1999	Santana v. Santana	708 N.E.2d 886	69
1996	American Management, Inc. v. MIF Realty, L.P.	666 N.E.2d 424	67
1999	Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Summit Corp. of America	715 N.E.2d 926	64
2004	In Re Adoption of MAS	815 N.E.2d 216	61
2003	B.K.C. v. State†	781 N.E.2d 1157	60

Showing the 15 most-cited of 870 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 Indiana Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was John Trent Sharpnack on?: John Trent Sharpnack was a Judge of the Indiana 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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17 years on the Indiana Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).