How do judges of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?

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

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1965 / Served to 1993

Thomas Brett

Judge, Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

Thomas Brett was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1965. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1993
Tenure: 1965–1993 · 28 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1965	Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Brett authored 1,308 published opinions for the court (1965–1992), plus 128 dissents and 267 concurrences. Most cited: Spuehler v. State (534 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. 993 of these were attributed to Brett 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
1985	Spuehler v. State	709 P.2d 202	534
1980	Chaney v. State	612 P.2d 269	164
1984	Robison v. State	677 P.2d 1080	155
1986	Walker v. State· Concurrence†	723 P.2d 273	151
1969	Sandefur v. State	461 P.2d 954	148
1980	Irvin v. State· Concurrence†	617 P.2d 588	123
1983	Davis v. State· Concurrence†	665 P.2d 1186	122
1985	Banks v. State	701 P.2d 418	119
1991	Sellers v. State· Concurrence†	809 P.2d 676	116
1982	Brewer v. State· Concurrence†	650 P.2d 54	108
1975	J. T. P v. State†	544 P.2d 1270	102
1988	McCarty v. State· Concurrence†	765 P.2d 1215	101
1985	Liles v. State· Concurrence†	702 P.2d 1025	101
1984	Stout v. State	693 P.2d 617	95
1982	Parks v. State	651 P.2d 686	95

Showing the 15 most-cited of 1,706 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 Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was Thomas Brett on?: Thomas Brett was a Judge of the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

Sources

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

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

See something wrong? Report an error. Fixes are logged in the corrections log.

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