Researching David Newell

A naturalist and lifelong hunter, he was also for several years editor of Field and Stream and hosted a nature and hunting show during the early years of television in the 1950s. He accompanied Annie Oakley on hunting trips when she wintered in Florida before her death in 1926. He also befriended fellow Florida author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Newell moved to Leesburg, Florida in 1912. He studied at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, enlisting in the United States Army in his junior year. After studying visual arts at the St. Louis School of Fine Arts, Newell went on to become a working journalist and illustrator, writing and creating art for dozens of publications including Life, Field and Stream, Boys' Life, The Saturday Evening Post, the New York Herald-Tribune and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Newell is buried at the cemetery of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Fruitland Park, Florida next to his first wife, Frances Bosanquet Newell, with whom he had three daughters. Many of Newell's paintings and letters can be seen at the Leesburg Heritage Museum, in Leesburg, FL, not far from his former home.

Newell graduated from the University of Houston in 1993, and from the University of Texas School of Law in Austin in 1997. Prior to his judgeship, Newell was an assistant prosecutor in the district attorney's office in Harris County, with a specialization in appeals. He also lectured and wrote on matters pertaining to criminal appellate law and was involved with the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. Newell argued cases before the Court of Criminal Appeals and the Texas Supreme Court. Before the United States Supreme Court, he successfully briefed the deciding issue in the 2013 Fifth Amendment case Salinas v. Texas.

In the Republican primary election held on March 4, 2014, Newell defeated his intra-party challenger, William Charles "Bud" Kirkendall (born 1949), a judge since 2004 of the 25th Judicial District and a former district attorney from Seguin in Guadalupe County, east of San Antonio, who also graduated from the University of Texas Law School. Newell polled 571,850 votes (52.2 percent) to Judge Kirkendall's 523, 055 (47.8 percent). In the general election Newell received 2,929,963 votes (78.3 percent) against the nominees of the Libertarian and Green parties.

Elected to the Court of Criminal Appeals with Newell were Bert Richardson and Kevin Patrick Yeary, both of San Antonio. The six-year terms of all three judges expire on December 31, 2020.