The high court of Alabama is the supreme court, consisting of a chief justice and eight associate justices, all elected for staggered six-year terms. It issues opinions on constitutional issues, and hears cases appealed from the lower courts. The court of civil appeals has exclusive appellate jurisdiction in all suits involving sums up to $10,000; its three judges are elected for six-year terms, and the one who has served the longest is the presiding judge. The five judges of the court of criminal appeals are also elected for six-year terms; they choose the presiding judge by majority vote.
Circuit courts, which encompassed 131 judgeships in 1999, have exclusive original jurisdiction over civil actions involving sums of more than $5,000, and over criminal prosecutions involving felony offenses. They also have original jurisdiction, concurrent with the district courts, in all civil matters exceeding $500. They have appellate jurisdiction over most cases from district and municipal courts. A new system of district courts replaced county and juvenile courts as of January 1977, staffed by judges who serve six-year terms. Municipal court judges are appointed by the municipality.
As of June 2001, 27,286 prisoners were held in 31 state and federal prisons in Alabama, an increase of 5.8% over the previous year. Alabama had an incarceration rate of 592 per 100,000 population. In 1976, US District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., ruled that conditions in Alabama prisons inflicted "cruel and unusual punishment" upon inmates, spurring the process of prison reform.
Alabama had an FBI Crime Index rate in 2001 of 4,319.4 crimes per 100,000 population, including a total of 19,582 violent crimes and 173,253 property crimes in that year. Alabama has a death penalty and has executed 162 persons since 1930. There were 27 executions in the state between 1977 and 2003. In 2003, there were 193 persons under sentence of death.
An Alabama case that became internationally notorious was that of the nine "Scottsboro boys," eight of whom were sentenced to death and one to life imprisonment in 1931 for the alleged rape of two white girls, one of whom later recanted her charges. After multiple appeals and reversals, five indictments were subsequently dropped; of the four remaining defendants, all sentenced to lengthy jail terms, three were paroled and one escaped to Michigan, which refused extradition.