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

The court's current selection method is partisan election.

Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals / Joined 1977 / Served to 1995

William M. Bowen Jr.

Judge, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals

William M. Bowen Jr. was a Judge of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1977. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1947 · age 79
Tenure: 1977–1995 · 18 yrs

Judicial service

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

Education

Samford University
Samford University

Judicial Record

In our data, Bowen authored 1,958 published opinions for the court (1901–1995), plus 71 dissents and 52 concurrences. Most cited: Cumbo v. State (507 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. 781 of these were attributed to Bowen 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
1978	Cumbo v. State	368 So. 2d 871	507
1984	Faircloth v. State	471 So. 2d 485	362
1990	Kuenzel v. State	577 So. 2d 474	336
1994	Taylor v. State	666 So. 2d 36	199
1978	Thomas v. State	363 So. 2d 1020	185
1979	Johnson v. State	378 So. 2d 1164	168
1991	Parker v. State	587 So. 2d 1072	152
1978	Anderson v. State	362 So. 2d 1296	144
1985	Bradley v. State	494 So. 2d 750	141
1986	Donahoo v. State	505 So. 2d 1067	132
1978	Temple v. State	366 So. 2d 740	132
1992	Carroll v. State	599 So. 2d 1253	130
1989	White v. State	546 So. 2d 1014	130
1989	Johnson v. State	555 So. 2d 818	126
1984	Cochran v. State	500 So. 2d 1161	123

Showing the 15 most-cited of 2,083 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 Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is partisan election.
Which court was William M. Bowen Jr. on?: William M. Bowen Jr. was a Judge of the Alabama 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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18 years on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).