Cheryl Johnson

Cheryl Ann Johnson (born September 30, 1946) is a former judge of the nine-member Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the court of last resort for state criminal cases. First elected in 1998, she won new six-year terms in 2004 and 2010 but did not seek a fourth term in 2016.

A native of Illinois, Johnson graduated in 1964 from Whetstone High School in Columbus, Ohio, and four years later received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Ohio State University. She then obtained in 1970 a Master of Science in inorganic crystallography from the University of Illinois at Urbana, Illinois. 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. She resides in Dripping Springs, Texas, with her husband, Gregory William Lasley (born 1949), a retired lieutenant with the Austin Police Department.

In 1996, Johnson ran unsuccessfully in a Republican runoff election for the Court of Criminal Appeals. Tom Price of Dallas won the nomination, 128,363 votes (57.2 percent) to Johnson's 95,941 (42.8 percent). Price then unseated the Democrat Frank Maloney to win the appeals court seat in the general election.

Two years later, however, Johnson narrowly won the Republican nomination for the Court of Criminal Appeals, then for the Place 2 position. 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 (57.8 percent) to 1,471,200 (42.2 percent) for the Democratic candidate, Winston Cochran. She succeeded the Democratic 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 U.S. Senator.

In 2004 and 2010, Johnson was reelected with 85.8 and 82.9 percent of the vote, respectively. Johnson's last term for Place 5 expired on December 31, 2016. She did not seek re-election and was succeeded on January 1, 2017, by her fellow Republican, Scott Walker.