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 1976 / Served to 1980

William T. Phillips

Judge, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

William T. Phillips was a Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, who joined the court in 1976. Opinions & record ↓ Sources ↓

Born: 1912 · age 114
Tenure: 1976–1980 · 4 yrs

Judicial service

Year	Court	Appointed by	Vote
1976	Texas Court of Criminal Appeals	–	–

Judicial Record

In our data, Phillips authored 180 published opinions for the court (1976–1981), plus 44 dissents and 18 concurrences. Most cited: Zillender v. State (440 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. 189 of these were attributed to Phillips 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
1977	Zillender v. State· Dissent†	557 S.W.2d 515	440
1979	Ely v. State†	582 S.W.2d 416	329
1978	Johnson v. State†	571 S.W.2d 170	305
1979	Carrillo v. State· Concurrence†	591 S.W.2d 876	254
1977	Landers v. State	550 S.W.2d 272	213
1979	McManus v. State· Dissent†	591 S.W.2d 505	193
1979	Luck v. State· Dissent†	588 S.W.2d 371	190
1978	Moon v. State· Concurrence†	572 S.W.2d 681	180
1980	Sanne v. State· Dissent†	609 S.W.2d 762	169
1979	Bates v. State· Dissent†	587 S.W.2d 121	164
1977	Williams v. State· Dissent†	547 S.W.2d 18	158
1979	Ex Parte McIver· Separate†	586 S.W.2d 851	155
1977	Drago v. State	553 S.W.2d 375	147
1978	Brewer v. State†	572 S.W.2d 719	143
1977	King v. State· Concurrence†	553 S.W.2d 105	143

Showing the 15 most-cited of 253 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 William T. Phillips on?: William T. Phillips 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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4 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).