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 1978 / Served to 1990

W. C. Davis

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

W. C. Davis was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1978. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1922 · age 104
Tenure: 1978–1990 · 12 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1978	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Davis authored 47 published opinions for the court (1988–1990), plus 3 dissents and 1 concurrence. Most cited: Gaddis v. State (445 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. 13 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
1988	Gaddis v. State	753 S.W.2d 396	445
1990	Duckett v. State	797 S.W.2d 906	294
1988	Holland v. State	761 S.W.2d 307	247
1990	Orona v. State	791 S.W.2d 125	205
1989	Lucas v. State	791 S.W.2d 35	200
1989	Sattiewhite v. State	786 S.W.2d 271	187
1989	Stearnes v. Clinton	780 S.W.2d 216	184
1990	Phillips v. State	787 S.W.2d 391	183
1990	Whiting v. State	797 S.W.2d 45	153
1989	Webb v. State†	766 S.W.2d 236	145
1988	Beets v. State· Separate†	767 S.W.2d 711	143
1990	Gordon v. State	801 S.W.2d 899	122
1988	Comer v. State	754 S.W.2d 656	119
1990	Green v. State	799 S.W.2d 756	112
1988	Capistran v. State†	759 S.W.2d 121	108

Showing the 15 most-cited of 53 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 W. C. Davis on?: W. C. 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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12 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).