Utah's highest court is the supreme court, consisting of a chief justice and 4 other justices, each serving a 10-year term. As of 1999 there were 37 district court judges, each one serving a 6-year term. Supreme court justices and district court judges are appointed by the governor with the consent of the state senate. Appointments must be ratified by the voters at the next general election. In 1984, to ease the supreme court's caseload, residents approved a constitutional amendment allowing the legislature to create an intermediate court.
In 2001, the FBI reported a crime-index rate of 4,243.0 crimes per 100,000 inhabitants, including a total of 5,314 violent crimes and 90,993 crimes against property in that year. Utah has a death penalty statute providing for execution by lethal injection or firing squad. In 1977 it executed (by firing squad) a prisoner, Gary Gilmore, thus becoming the first state in a decade to carry out a sentence of capital punishment. Between 1977 and 2003, the state executed six persons in total. As of 2003, 11 persons were under sentence of death. Prisoners under jurisdiction of state and federal correctional facilities numbered 5,440 in June 2001, a decrease of 0.2% from the previous year. The state's incarceration rate stood at 235 per 100,000 inhabitants.