How do judges of the California Court of Appeal reach the bench?

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

California Court of Appeal / Joined 2012 / Active

Rosendo Peña Jr.

Associate Justice, California Court of Appeal

Rosendo Peña Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal, serving since 2012. He previously served on the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1955 · age 71
Tenure: Since 2012 · 13 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
2002	Superior Court of California, County of Fresno	–	–
2012	California Court of Appeal	–	–

Education

California State University-Fresno		1977
University of California-Los Angeles		1980

Judicial Record

In our data, Peña authored 18 published opinions for the court (2013–2019). Most cited: People v. Gutierrez-Salazar (124 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. 18 of these were attributed to Peña 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
2019	People v. Gutierrez-Salazar†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 178	124
2018	People v. Tapia†	237 Cal. Rptr. 3d 572	54
2019	People v. Jefferson†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 170	40
2018	Leyva v. Garcia†	236 Cal. Rptr. 3d 128	28
2018	People v. D.N. (In re D.N.)†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 267	28
2018	Antelope Valley Groundwater Cases Antelope Valley-east Kern Water Agency v. L. A. Cnty. Waterworks Dist. No. 40, Cross†	241 Cal. Rptr. 3d 692	18
2017	People v. Marquez†	11 Cal. App. 5th 816	14
2013	People v. Anaya†	221 Cal. App. 4th 252	10
2014	E. J. Franks Construction Inc. v. Sahota†	226 Cal. App. 4th 1123	8
2018	Brown v. Superior Court of Fresno Cnty.†	228 Cal. Rptr. 3d 687	6
2019	In re Rigsby†	251 Cal. Rptr. 3d 561	5
2018	People v. Fleming†	236 Cal. Rptr. 3d 75	5
2019	People v. Barton†	244 Cal. Rptr. 3d 489	4
2017	In re Robinson†	227 Cal. Rptr. 3d 474	4
2016	People v. McEntire†	247 Cal. App. 4th 484	4

Showing the 15 most-cited of 18 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 California Court of Appeal reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court is Rosendo Peña Jr. on?: Rosendo Peña Jr. is an Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.

Sources

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

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