Superior Court of California, County of Orange / Joined 1986 / Served to 2001

William Thomas McDonald Sr.

Judge, Superior Court of California, County of Orange

William Thomas McDonald Sr. was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange, who joined the court in 1986. He previously served on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1911 · age 115
Tenure: 1986–2001 · 15 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1960	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–
1986	Superior Court of California, County of Orange	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, McDonald authored 405 published opinions for the court (1960–1967), plus 12 dissents and 8 concurrences. Most cited: Hullum v. State (166 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. 262 of these were attributed to McDonald 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
1967	Hullum v. State	415 S.W.2d 192	166
1964	Lopez v. State	384 S.W.2d 345	131
1964	Rippee v. State	384 S.W.2d 717	112
1964	Fisher v. State	379 S.W.2d 900	92
1967	Ex Parte Davis	412 S.W.2d 46	78
1964	Fowler v. State	379 S.W.2d 345	75
1966	Rojas v. State· Dissent†	404 S.W.2d 30	68
1964	Cranford v. State	377 S.W.2d 957	60
1964	Nichols v. State	378 S.W.2d 335	58
1963	Stover v. State	365 S.W.2d 808	56
1965	Hill v. State	393 S.W.2d 901	54
1961	Hultin v. State	351 S.W.2d 248	53
1963	Pitcock v. State	367 S.W.2d 864	44
1964	Roper v. State	375 S.W.2d 454	43
1961	Soliz v. State	350 S.W.2d 566	43

Showing the 15 most-cited of 468 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 Superior Court of California, County of Orange reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William Thomas McDonald Sr. on?: William Thomas McDonald Sr. was a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Orange.

Sources

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15 years on the Superior Court of California, County of Orange. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).