Tarrant CountyCriminal CourtNo. 7
Republican
County criminal courts decide misdemeanors, the lower-level crimes in Tarrant County. Eric Starnes, the Republican judge of Court No. 7, spent more than two decades as a police officer before becoming a prosecutor.
Starnes was a Euless police officer from 1993 to 2017, 24 years in all, and earned his law degree at Texas Wesleyan in 2006. In 2017 he became a Tarrant County assistant district attorney. His own bio calls him "a career public servant."
Judges aren't allowed to take sides on these values — it's against judicial ethics rules. The best clue to how a judge thinks is the party they run with.