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

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

Supreme Court of Indiana / Joined 1968 / Served to 1996

Roger O. DeBruler

Justice, Supreme Court of Indiana

Roger O. DeBruler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana, who joined the court in 1968. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1934 · age 92
Tenure: 1968–1996 · 27 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1968	Supreme Court of Indiana	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, DeBruler authored 924 published opinions for the court (1968–1996), plus 455 dissents and 258 concurrences. Most cited: Johnson v. St. Vincent Hospital, Inc. (365 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. 913 of these were attributed to DeBruler 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
1980	Johnson v. St. Vincent Hospital, Inc.	404 N.E.2d 585	365
1976	Maldonado v. State†	355 N.E.2d 843	345
1975	Patterson v. State· Dissent†	324 N.E.2d 482	344
1995	Wright v. State· Concurrence†	658 N.E.2d 563	328
1993	Weatherford v. State· Dissent†	619 N.E.2d 915	251
1974	Miller v. Griesel	308 N.E.2d 701	236
1986	White v. State· Dissent†	497 N.E.2d 893	232
1975	Pirtle v. State	323 N.E.2d 634	210
1970	Smith v. State	260 N.E.2d 558	210
1996	American States Insurance Co. v. Kiger	662 N.E.2d 945	209
1978	Bruce v. State	375 N.E.2d 1042	200
1992	Stephenson v. Ledbetter· Dissent†	596 N.E.2d 1369	195
1995	Brown v. State	653 N.E.2d 77	181
1972	Lewis v. State	288 N.E.2d 138	175
1976	Ortiz v. State	356 N.E.2d 1188	173

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,638 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 Supreme Court of Indiana reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Roger O. DeBruler on?: Roger O. DeBruler was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Indiana.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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