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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Ohio Court of Appeals / Joined 2005 / Active

Mary E. Donovan

Judge, Ohio Court of Appeals

Mary E. Donovan is a Judge of the Ohio Court of Appeals, serving since 2005. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 2005 · 21 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2005	Ohio Court of Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Donovan authored 1,260 published opinions for the court (2005–2022), plus 32 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: State v. Parker (61 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. 46 of these were attributed to Donovan 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
2008	State v. Parker	899 N.E.2d 183	61
2012	In re R.L.	2012 Ohio 6049	37
2021	State v. Thompson	2021 Ohio 4027	35
2008	Beismann v. Beismann, 22323 (3-7-2008)	2008 Ohio 984	35
2008	State v. Crowley, 2007 Ca 99 (9-12-2008)	2008 Ohio 4636	33
2008	Inskeep v. Burton, 2007 Ca 11 (4-25-2008)	2008 Ohio 1982	32
2012	Jenkins v. Jenkins	2012 Ohio 4182	31
2019	State v. Koch	2019 Ohio 4099	30
2017	State v. Becraft· Dissent†	2017 Ohio 1464	30
2007	State v. Gillespie· Dissent	172 Ohio App. 3d 304	29
2014	State v. Rastbichler	2014 Ohio 628	28
2014	State v. Hammad	2014 Ohio 3638	26
2012	State v. Johnson	2012 Ohio 1230	26
2008	State v. Bell	891 N.E.2d 1280	26
2017	State v. Hall· Concurrence†	2017 Ohio 2682	25

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,300 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 Ohio Court of Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Mary E. Donovan on?: Mary E. Donovan is a Judge of the Ohio 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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21 years on the Ohio Court of Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).