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 1969 / Served to 1980

Leon Burr Douglas

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Leon Burr Douglas was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1969. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1916 · age 110
Tenure: 1969–1980 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1969	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Douglas authored 906 published opinions for the court (1969–1980), plus 216 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: Alejandro v. State (877 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. 655 of these were attributed to Douglas 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
1973	Alejandro v. State· Dissent†	493 S.W.2d 230	877
1980	Garcia v. Dial	596 S.W.2d 524	442
1977	Zillender v. State· Concurrence†	557 S.W.2d 515	440
1980	Dinnery v. State· Dissent†	592 S.W.2d 343	416
1977	Basaldua v. State· Dissent†	558 S.W.2d 2	360
1976	Day v. State· Dissent†	532 S.W.2d 302	359
1978	Crocker v. State†	573 S.W.2d 190	336
1980	Brasfield v. State· Dissent†	600 S.W.2d 288	278
1972	Lacy v. State†	477 S.W.2d 577	224
1977	Landers v. State· Separate†	550 S.W.2d 272	213
1969	Olson v. State	484 S.W.2d 756	176
1977	Turner v. State· Dissent†	545 S.W.2d 133	167
1978	Tarpley v. State†	565 S.W.2d 525	163
1976	Ex Parte Cannon· Dissent†	546 S.W.2d 266	161
1977	Williams v. State· Dissent†	547 S.W.2d 18	158

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,215 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 Leon Burr Douglas on?: Leon Burr Douglas 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

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11 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).