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 1981 / Served to 2000

Michael Jerry McCormick

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Michael Jerry McCormick was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1981. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1945 · age 81
Tenure: 1981–2000 · 19 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1981	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McCormick authored 409 published opinions for the court (1981–2000), plus 166 dissents and 45 concurrences. Most cited: Stafford v. State (9,170 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. 362 of these were attributed to McCormick 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
1991	Stafford v. State	813 S.W.2d 503	9,170
1991	Montgomery v. State	810 S.W.2d 372	7,264
1997	Guzman v. State	955 S.W.2d 85	6,556
1996	Clewis v. State· Dissent†	922 S.W.2d 126	5,788
1991	Boykin v. State· Dissent†	818 S.W.2d 782	1,829
1995	Patrick v. State	906 S.W.2d 481	1,680
1999	Hernandez v. State†	988 S.W.2d 770	1,653
1991	Matson v. State	819 S.W.2d 839	1,540
1995	Dinkins v. State· Concurrence†	894 S.W.2d 330	1,534
1998	Leday v. State· Dissent†	983 S.W.2d 713	1,256
1996	Villarreal v. State· Concurrence†	935 S.W.2d 134	1,246
1989	Harris v. State· Concurrence†	790 S.W.2d 568	1,170
1992	Adelman v. State	828 S.W.2d 418	1,143
1996	Cockrell v. State	933 S.W.2d 73	1,118
1991	Heitman v. State· Dissent†	815 S.W.2d 681	1,035

Showing the 15 most-cited of 651 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 Michael Jerry McCormick on?: Michael Jerry McCormick 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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19 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).