Appeals cost money, too

The number of appeals to the Alabama Supreme Court fell for the second straight year in 2004, hitting a four-year low. Associate Justice Harold See attributes the decline to a stabler judicial philosophy after several new justices settled into their jobs on the court, whose composition has shifted in the last decade from a Democratic stranglehold to a Republican stranglehold.

Meanwhile, the Court of Criminal Appeals judges' caseloads, in keeping with tradition, are still more than twice as heavy as the national average.