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 1979 / Served to 1996

Samuel Houston Clinton Jr.

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Samuel Houston Clinton Jr. was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1979. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1923–2004
Tenure: 1979–1996 · 17 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1979	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Education

Baylor University

Judicial Record

In our data, Clinton authored 505 published opinions for the court (1979–1996), plus 422 dissents and 295 concurrences. Most cited: Montgomery v. State (7,264 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. 965 of these were attributed to Clinton 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	Montgomery v. State· Dissent†	810 S.W.2d 372	7,264
1985	Almanza v. State· Dissent†	686 S.W.2d 157	6,557
1996	Clewis v. State· Concurrence†	922 S.W.2d 126	5,788
1986	Hernandez v. State· Concurrence†	726 S.W.2d 53	3,060
1991	Geesa v. State· Dissent†	820 S.W.2d 154	2,157
1988	Moreno v. State· Concurrence†	755 S.W.2d 866	1,851
1993	Bigley v. State· Dissent†	865 S.W.2d 26	1,789
1995	Patrick v. State· Concurrence†	906 S.W.2d 481	1,680
1995	Dinkins v. State· Dissent†	894 S.W.2d 330	1,534
1996	Villarreal v. State· Concurrence†	935 S.W.2d 134	1,246
1991	Saxton v. State· Dissent†	804 S.W.2d 910	1,233
1993	Muniz v. State· Dissent†	851 S.W.2d 238	1,228
1989	Harris v. State· Dissent†	790 S.W.2d 568	1,170
1992	Kelly v. State· Concurrence†	824 S.W.2d 568	1,156
1992	Adelman v. State· Dissent†	828 S.W.2d 418	1,143

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,259 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 Samuel Houston Clinton Jr. on?: Samuel Houston Clinton Jr. 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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17 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).