Cheryl A. Johnson is a judge of the nine-member Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the court of last resort for state criminal cases.
Education
A native of Illinois, Johnson graduated from Whetstone High School, Columbus, Ohio, in 1964 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry in 1968 from Ohio State University. She then obtained in 1970 a Master of Science in inorganic crystallography from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois.
Career
She worked in the private sector as a computer programmer and chemist until 1980 when she entered law school. In 1983, she received a Juris Doctor from John Marshall Law School in Chicago. From 1983 to 1984, she clerked for Judge Sam Johnson (no relation) of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
From 1984 until her election to the Court of Criminal Appeals, Johnson practiced law in Austin, Texas.
In 1996, Johnson ran unsuccessfully in a Republican runoff election for the Court of Criminal Appeals. In a runoff election held on April 14, 1998, she defeated intra-party challenger Harvey Hudson, 104,773 (51 percent) to 100,818 (49 percent).
In the general election, she received 2,103,959 votes (578 percent) to 1,471,200 (422 percent) for the Democrat candidate, Winston Cochran. She succeeded the Democrat African-American judge, Morris Overstreet, who ran instead, unsuccessfully, for his party"s nomination for state attorney general against Jim Mattox, who then lost the general election to Republican John Cornyn, now Texas"s senior United States. Senator.
In 2004 and 2010, Johnson was reelected with 85.8 and 82.9 percent of the vote, respectively.
Judge Johnson"s current term for Place 5 expires on December 31, 2016. She is not seeking re-election.