The Mississippi supreme court consists of a chief justice, two presiding justices, and eight associate justices, all elected to eight-year terms. The constitution stipulates that the supreme court must hold two sessions a year in the state capital; one session is to commence on the 2nd Monday of September, the other on the 1st Monday of March. A new court of appeals was created in 1995. It consists of one chief judge, two presiding judges, and seven judges. Principal trial courts are the circuit courts, which try both civil and criminal cases; their 49 judges are elected to four-year terms. Municipal court judges are appointed. Small-claims courts are presided over by justices of the peace, who need not be lawyers.
There were 20,672 prisoners in state and federal prisons in Mississippi as of June 2001, an increase of 7.3% over the previous year. The state's incarceration rate stood at 689 per 100,000 inhabitants.
In 2001, Mississippi had a total FBI Crime Index rate of 4,185.2 per 100,000 population, including a total of 10,006 violent crimes and 109,609 crimes against property in that year. The death penalty was reinstated in 1977, and since then six persons have been executed. In 2003, 67 persons were under sentence of death.