Kyle A. Hixson

Who Is Kyle Hixson? Knoxville Judge Nominated by Gov. Bill Lee to the Tennessee Supreme Court., Nashville Banner, Jan. 23, 2026.

Justice Hixson described his judicial philosophy as “textualist” and “originalist,” and credited Justice Scalia with helping make that approach “a solid mainstream part of American jurisprudence.”

He cited Justice Scalia and Judges Leibowitz and McGee as role models, crediting Judges Leibowitz and McGee with teaching him “demeanor and respect for others.”

He identified Antonin Scalia, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett as his favorite federal justices.

In State v. Wert (2025),The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Hixson, affirmed Wert’s voluntary manslaughter conviction for fatally shooting Watkins outside Wert’s home. The court held that the trial court committed two harmless errors involving improper use of text messages and prosecutorial comments during closing argument, but neither affected the verdict. The court also concluded that the “castle doctrine” instruction did not apply because the shooting occurred outside the residence without unlawful entry into a protected structure. Finally, the court determined that the evidence sufficiently disproved Wert’s self-defense claim beyond a reasonable doubt.

In State v. Curran, III (2025), the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Hixson, affirmed Curran III’s convictions for writing a bad check and filing a false lien during his failed attempt to buy and restore the Saltillo Marina in Hardin County. The court rejected Curran’s argument that Tennessee courts lacked authority because the property involved federal or TVA land, explaining that the crimes occurred in Hardin County when he filed the lien locally and gave a worker a check he knew lacked sufficient funds. The court also rejected claims that the trial judge should have stepped aside, explaining that simply suing or complaining about a judge does not automatically require recusal. Many of Curran’s additional complaints; including claims about his lawyer, alleged due process violations, Brady violations, and sentencing errors were dismissed because he failed to properly preserve them for appeal or provide the necessary records. Finally, the court found the evidence sufficient because the $25,000 check was used not only to pay for past work but also to persuade the worker to continue working on the marina project, even though Curran did not have enough money in his account to cover it.

In State v. Cummings (2025), the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Hixson, ruled that police illegally searched Cummings’s home because the search warrant was based on weak and unreliable information. The court explained that an anonymous caller’s claims about drugs and guns inside the home were never meaningfully verified by police, did not clearly identify the property to be searched, and gave no indication of when the alleged activity occurred. The court also held that officers smelling marijuana somewhere near the property did not, by itself, justify searching the residence because the smell was not tied to a specific car or room and could not reliably establish illegal activity. In addition, the court found that Cummings’s drug convictions from more than twenty years earlier did little to show current criminal conduct. Because the warrant failed to establish a reliable connection between alleged crimes and the Summitville Road home, the court ruled that the search violated the Fourth Amendment and the Tennessee Constitution, suppressed the evidence found during the search, reversed the convictions, and dismissed the case entirely.

In Sutton v. Tennessee (2025), in an opinion by Judge Hixson, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals denied Sutton’s request to reopen his post conviction case and upheld the denial of relief. Sutton, who was sentenced to death for a 1992 murder, argued that the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard created a new constitutional rule banning any consideration of race in Tennessee’s death penalty review process. The court rejected that argument, holding that the Supreme Court decision did not create a new rule of constitutional criminal law and did not apply retroactively. The court also found Tennessee’s proportionality review constitutional because race is considered only to prevent discrimination in death penalty cases, not to give racial preferences.

In State v. Upton (2024), the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Hixson, dismissed Amy Upton’s appeal after ruling that she did not clearly explain the legal issue she wanted reviewed. Upton argued that Union County deputies improperly stopped and arrested her in neighboring Claiborne County before finding methamphetamine and other drugs in her vehicle. After pleading guilty, she tried to challenge the legality of the stop and search through a certified question of law. The court held that Tennessee rules require defendants to describe those questions very specifically, and because Upton’s question was too vague, the court lacked authority to review her appeal.