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 1987 / Served to 1990

Maurice Palmer Duncan

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Maurice Palmer Duncan was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1987. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1945 · age 81
Tenure: 1987–1990 · 3 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1987	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Education

South Texas College of Law

Judicial Record

In our data, Duncan authored 54 published opinions for the court (1987–1991), plus 11 dissents and 11 concurrences. Most cited: Harris v. State (1,170 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. 33 of these were attributed to Duncan 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
1989	Harris v. State	790 S.W.2d 568	1,170
1988	Rose v. State· Concurrence†	752 S.W.2d 529	647
1990	Meraz v. State	785 S.W.2d 146	577
1988	Martin v. State· Concurrence†	753 S.W.2d 384	464
1987	Beardsley v. State· Concurrence†	738 S.W.2d 681	430
1989	Patterson v. State	769 S.W.2d 938	417
1989	Bynum v. State	767 S.W.2d 769	394
1987	Montoya v. State· Separate†	744 S.W.2d 15	306
1987	Ex Parte Cruz· Dissent†	739 S.W.2d 53	302
1989	Ex Parte Adams	768 S.W.2d 281	295
1987	Janecka v. State· Dissent†	739 S.W.2d 813	224
1987	Ward v. State	740 S.W.2d 794	223
1991	Boyle v. State	820 S.W.2d 122	201
1989	Murphy v. State· Concurrence†	777 S.W.2d 44	199
1987	Long v. State	742 S.W.2d 302	195

Showing the 15 most-cited of 78 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 Maurice Palmer Duncan on?: Maurice Palmer Duncan 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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3 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).