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 1977 / Served to 1987

Thomas Gilmer Davis

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Thomas Gilmer Davis was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1921 · age 105
Tenure: 1977–1987 · 10 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1977	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Davis authored 47 published opinions for the court (1977). Most cited: Jackson v. State (271 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. 48 of these were attributed to Davis 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
1977	Jackson v. State†	548 S.W.2d 685	271
1977	Burns v. State†	556 S.W.2d 270	192
1977	Stogsdill v. State†	552 S.W.2d 481	94
1977	Torres v. State†	552 S.W.2d 821	92
1977	Dillard v. State· Separate†	550 S.W.2d 45	89
1977	McIlveen v. State†	559 S.W.2d 815	83
1977	Parr v. State of Texas†	557 S.W.2d 99	78
1977	Robinson v. State†	550 S.W.2d 54	77
1977	Stuebgen v. State†	547 S.W.2d 29	71
1977	Ex Parte Branch†	553 S.W.2d 380	69
1977	Graham v. State†	546 S.W.2d 605	54
1977	Victory v. State†	547 S.W.2d 1	53
1977	Battie v. State†	551 S.W.2d 401	51
1977	Hardage v. State†	552 S.W.2d 837	47
1977	Moore v. State†	545 S.W.2d 140	45

Showing the 15 most-cited of 48 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 Thomas Gilmer Davis on?: Thomas Gilmer Davis 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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10 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).