How do judges of the Wyoming Supreme Court reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Wyoming Supreme Court / Joined 1974 / Served to 1998

Richard V. Thomas

Justice, Wyoming Supreme Court

Richard V. Thomas was a Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1932 · age 94
Tenure: 1974–1998 · 24 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Wyoming Supreme Court	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Thomas authored 499 published opinions for the court (1975–1998), plus 135 dissents and 213 concurrences. Most cited: Vaughn v. State (273 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. 809 of these were attributed to Thomas 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
1998	Vaughn v. State†	962 P.2d 149	273
1993	Parker Land & Cattle Co. v. Wyoming Game & Fish Commission· Concurrence†	845 P.2d 1040	256
1986	Martin v. State· Concurrence†	720 P.2d 894	256
1986	Frias v. State· Dissent†	722 P.2d 135	163
1986	Cordova v. Gosar· Concurrence†	719 P.2d 625	159
1989	Stephens v. State†	774 P.2d 60	144
1975	Johnson v. Soulis†	542 P.2d 867	142
1994	Wilson v. State· Dissent†	874 P.2d 215	132
1986	Leithead v. American Colloid Co.· Concurrence†	721 P.2d 1059	131
1991	Allied-Signal, Inc. v. Wyoming State Board of Equalization†	813 P.2d 214	119
1994	State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. v. Shrader· Dissent†	882 P.2d 813	118
1986	Schmunk v. State· Dissent†	714 P.2d 724	111
1979	Duke v. Housen· Concurrence†	589 P.2d 334	106
1984	Jahnke v. State†	682 P.2d 991	105
1993	Saldana v. State†	846 P.2d 604	104

Showing the 15 most-cited of 850 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 Wyoming Supreme Court reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Richard V. Thomas on?: Richard V. Thomas was a Justice of the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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