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 1971 / Served to 1982

Truman Ernest Roberts

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Truman Ernest Roberts was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1971. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1917 · age 109
Tenure: 1971–1982 · 11 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1971	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Roberts authored 770 published opinions for the court (1971–1984), plus 114 dissents and 78 concurrences. Most cited: Griffin v. State (993 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. 496 of these were attributed to Roberts 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
1981	Griffin v. State†	614 S.W.2d 155	993
1977	Zillender v. State	557 S.W.2d 515	440
1978	Dillon v. State· Dissent†	574 S.W.2d 92	372
1976	Day v. State· Concurrence†	532 S.W.2d 302	359
1979	Blott v. State	588 S.W.2d 588	314
1980	Quinones v. State· Dissent†	592 S.W.2d 933	312
1978	McNew v. State†	608 S.W.2d 166	264
1982	Ex Parte McWilliams· Dissent†	634 S.W.2d 815	259
1982	Ex Parte Robinson†	641 S.W.2d 552	248
1979	Cumbie v. State†	578 S.W.2d 732	245
1982	Rogers v. State· Separate†	640 S.W.2d 248	244
1974	Ex Parte Carr	511 S.W.2d 523	239
1975	Jurek v. State· Dissent†	522 S.W.2d 934	238
1981	Ferguson v. State· Separate†	622 S.W.2d 846	211
1976	Moore v. State· Dissent†	542 S.W.2d 664	208

Showing the 15 most-cited of 992 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 Truman Ernest Roberts on?: Truman Ernest Roberts 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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11 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).