How do judges of the Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?

The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.

Supreme Court of Maryland / Joined 1974 / Served to 1976

William J. O'Donnell

Justice, Supreme Court of Maryland

William J. O'Donnell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland, who joined the court in 1974. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Lived: 1916–1976
Tenure: 1974–1976 · 2 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1974	Supreme Court of Maryland	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, O'Donnell authored 33 published opinions for the court (1974–1976), plus 7 dissents and 2 concurrences. Most cited: Dorsey v. State (660 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. 42 of these were attributed to O'Donnell 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
1976	Dorsey v. State†	350 A.2d 665	660
1974	Wilhelm v. State†	326 A.2d 707	259
1975	State v. Fabritz· Dissent†	348 A.2d 275	179
1974	Lynx, Inc. v. Ordnance Products, Inc.†	327 A.2d 502	171
1975	Criminal Injuries Compensation Board v. Gould†	331 A.2d 55	169
1975	I. W. Berman Properties v. Porter Bros.†	344 A.2d 65	148
1974	Canaras v. Lift Truck Services, Inc.†	322 A.2d 866	133
1974	Gladden v. State†	330 A.2d 176	117
1975	Traylor v. Grafton†	332 A.2d 651	93
1975	Everhart v. State†	337 A.2d 100	90
1975	Epps v. State†	345 A.2d 62	89
1975	Moran v. Fabergé, Inc.· Dissent†	332 A.2d 11	87
1975	Harrison v. State†	345 A.2d 830	80
1974	State v. Barnes†	328 A.2d 737	74
1975	Ford v. State· Dissent†	337 A.2d 81	64

Showing the 15 most-cited of 42 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 Supreme Court of Maryland reach the bench?: The court's current selection method is merit selection with retention.
Which court was William J. O'Donnell on?: William J. O'Donnell was a Justice of the Supreme Court of Maryland.

Sources

Each fact on this page traces to a primary public record.

How we source & reconcile data → Data & Sources

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2 years on the Supreme Court of Maryland. Data as of 2026-03-31. Informational only; verify against the primary source before relying. Not a consumer report (FCRA).