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 1998 / Active

Melissa S. May

Judge, Indiana Court of Appeals

Melissa S. May is a Judge of the Indiana Court of Appeals, serving since 1998. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Tenure: Since 1998 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1998	Indiana Court of Appeals	–	–

Education

Indiana University-South Bend

Judicial Record

In our data, May authored 625 published opinions for the court (2002–2026), plus 35 dissents and 22 concurrences. Most cited: Kendall Johnson v. State of Indiana (145 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. 682 of these were attributed to May 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
2013	Kendall Johnson v. State of Indiana†	986 N.E.2d 852	145
2013	In the Matter of the Term. of the Parent-Child Rel. of J.C., Et.C. & El.C. S.C. v. Indiana Department of Child Services†	994 N.E.2d 278	138
2008	Sanchez v. State†	891 N.E.2d 174	105
2005	Goldsberry v. State†	821 N.E.2d 447	99
2011	Holloway v. State†	950 N.E.2d 803	84
2013	Constance Anderson v. State of Indiana†	989 N.E.2d 823	81
2005	Kelly v. Levandoski†	825 N.E.2d 850	77
2015	John Paul Garcia v. State of Indiana†	47 N.E.3d 1249	76
2011	Amalfitano v. State†	956 N.E.2d 208	67
2006	Weaver v. State†	845 N.E.2d 1066	57
2011	Tharpe v. State†	955 N.E.2d 836	53
2016	Adam K. Baumholser v. State of Indiana†	62 N.E.3d 411	52
2009	Benefield v. State· Concurrence†	904 N.E.2d 239	52
2010	Harness v. Schmitt†	924 N.E.2d 162	48
2007	Prince v. Department of Child Services†	861 N.E.2d 1223	48

Showing the 15 most-cited of 682 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 is Melissa S. May on?: Melissa S. May is 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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28 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).