← Election Series · Down-ballot coverage · Tennessee

Per-judge retention calls inside

The ballot

Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals judges are appointed by the governor, confirmed by the General Assembly, and then face statewide yes-or-no retention elections every eight years. A majority of YES votes retains the judge. This cycle's retention election was held August 6, 2026 — not November 3 — and both judges in this guide were retained; the margins below are verified results, appended to calls made on the pre-election record. Both judges were recent appointees sent to the voters at the first August election after appointment, as Tennessee law provides for new appellate judges.

The evaluation correction, printed up front: the Tennessee Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission described in older references (Tenn. Code §17-4-201) expired June 30, 2014 — the Administrative Office of the Courts archives it as no longer existing. There was no official evaluation in 2026. The functional evaluations on the record are the confirmation process and the voters' August verdicts.

Judge Stacy L. Street (Eastern Section)

Appointed by: Governor Bill Lee (appointment announced March 26, 2026), from the Criminal Court bench of the First Judicial District (Johnson City region). East Tennessee State University; juris doctor per his Administrative Office of the Courts appointment profile. Retained August 6, 2026, with 74.1% YES — the second-largest margin of the seven appellate judges on the August ballot.

Credits: A career criminal-court trial judge elevated to the court that reviews criminal courts — the direct-experience appointment. His documented file at this sourcing depth is appointment, prior criminal-court service, and the retention verdict itself; it is thinner than his colleague's below, and this guide says so rather than padding it.

Dirt column: No misconduct, discipline, adverse finding, or organized opposition located in the appointment, confirmation, or results coverage worked for this guide.

Judge Steven W. Sword (Eastern Section)

Appointed by: Governor Bill Lee, to fill the vacancy from the death of Judge James Curwood Witt Jr.; the House Judiciary Committee recommended him 17–0 with 4 present-not-voting. Retained August 6, 2026, with 72.1% YES.

Credits — the fullest trial record in Tennessee's 2026 retention class. Knox County Criminal Court judge from 2011 — appointed by Governor Bill Haslam to succeed Judge Richard Baumgartner, whose tenure ended in a drug scandal, meaning Sword was specifically the cleanup appointment — then repeatedly elected by Knox County voters. Before the bench: Knox County prosecutor; University of Tennessee College of Law. On that bench for over a decade he drew the region's hardest docket: the Joel Guy Jr. family-murder trial, the Norman Clark homicide trial, and the trials arising from the 2015 killing of 15-year-old Zaevion Dobson, a case of national attention. A judge handed a scandal-vacated court and the county's most notorious murder trials, then re-elected repeatedly and retained statewide at 72.1%, has been evaluated by every mechanism Tennessee actually used — and passed all of them.

Dirt column: None located. The appointment coverage, committee record (no dissenting votes), and results reporting contain no adverse entry at the proven standard.

OUR CALL

Retain — both: Stacy L. Street and Steven W. Sword. (Calls recorded on the pre-election record; the August 6 results — Street 74.1% YES, Sword 72.1% YES — are appended as results, and Tennessee voters agreed with both.)

Our standard is the same in every state in this coverage: Retain for a serviceable documented record; Do Not Retain requires proven cause — documented misconduct, proven activist judging, or an evaluation failure. Tennessee has run no evaluation since 2014, and neither file holds proven cause. Sword's is the strongest file in the state's 2026 class — a scandal-succession appointment, a decade of capital-grade trial work, repeated electoral ratification. Street's file is thinner in documentation and is labeled that way in his entry; what it contains — criminal-court service, appointment, and a 74.1% statewide verdict, the second-best margin on the ballot — is a documented record with no adverse entry, which is a Retain file under this standard, not an insufficient-record one: the search that produced it is documented in his entry and in the sources below.

For the complete Election 2026 breakdown — every race, claim by claim — see the full coverage on our website.

Vote early. Research your candidates. Choose the best moderates, whatever their party — no extremism from either side. And encourage your friends and family to do the same.

Sources

Election result — November 4, 2026

Result pending. No verified call (Associated Press or official) as of November 4, 2026. This page will be updated when the race is called or certified. The original article above is unchanged.

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

← Full down-ballot enumeration