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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Court of Appeals of Texas / Joined 2013 / Active

Patricia O'Connell Alvarez

Justice, Court of Appeals of Texas

Patricia O'Connell Alvarez is a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas, serving since 2013. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1954 · age 72
Tenure: Since 2013 · 13 yrs
Education: The of Texas at San Antonio 1982

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2013	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–
2019	Court of Appeals of Texas	–	–

Education

The University of Texas at San Antonio	Business Administration	1982
The University of Texas at Austin		1987
Duke University		2023

Judicial Record

In our data, Alvarez authored 105 published opinions for the court (2013–2018), plus 2 dissents and 4 concurrences. Most cited: Dale Fulmer v. State (70 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. 111 of these were attributed to Alvarez 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	Dale Fulmer v. State†	401 S.W.3d 305	70
2014	Ex Parte Devan S. Matthews†	452 S.W.3d 8	52
2015	Barry Brooks, Heston C. King, Stefen Douglas Brooks, Johanna Barton, and Jesse Rodriguez Benavides v. Excellence Mortgage, Ltd. LADTD-1, LLC Grothues Financial, Ltd. Grothues Brothers Management I, LLC And Georgetown Mortgage, L.L.C.†	486 S.W.3d 29	47
2013	Texas Department of Public Safety v. Timothy Dicken†	415 S.W.3d 476	44
2014	Romeo Hinojosa v. State†	433 S.W.3d 742	41
2016	In re M.G.N.†	491 S.W.3d 386	37
2013	Robert Watson v. State†	421 S.W.3d 186	34
2013	Estate of Martha Jane Valdez†	406 S.W.3d 228	34
2014	Shawn Pierre Lee v. State†	442 S.W.3d 569	32
2015	Robert Marx and Debbie Marx v. Fdp, Lp†	474 S.W.3d 368	30
2013	Martin E. Roberts v. Margaret D. Roberts†	402 S.W.3d 833	27
2014	SCHUHARDT CONSULTING PROFIT SHARING PLAN, Appellant/Cross-Appellee v. DOUBLE KNOBS MOUNTAIN RANCH, INC., Appellee/Cross-Appellant†	468 S.W.3d 557	26
2013	Gregory Everett Mitchell v. State†	419 S.W.3d 655	25
2014	Phillip Wayne Griffis v. State†	441 S.W.3d 599	23
2015	Andres Alfredo Segovia v. State†	467 S.W.3d 545	22

Showing the 15 most-cited of 111 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 Court of Appeals of Texas reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court is Patricia O'Connell Alvarez on?: Patricia O'Connell Alvarez is a Justice of the Court of Appeals of Texas.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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13 years on the Court of Appeals of Texas. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).