several months. Judicial system The judges and justices who make up Virginia's judicial system, also the oldest in America, are elected by a majority vote in both the House and Senate without input from the governor, one way Virginia's legislature is stronger than its executive. The system consists of a hierarchy from the Supreme Court of Virginia and the Court of Appeals of Virginia to the Circuit Courts, the trial courts of general jurisdiction, and the lower General District Courts and Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Courts. The Supreme Court has seven justices who serve twelve-year terms, with a mandatory retirement age of 73. The Supreme Court selects its own Chief Justice from among their seven members, who is informally limited to two four-year terms. Virginia was the last state to guarantee an automatic right of appeal for all civil and criminal cases, and their Court of Appeals increased from eleven to seventeen judges in 2021. The Code of Virginia is the statutory law, and consists of the codified legislation of the General Assembly. Virginia has no "pocket veto," and bills will become law if the governor chooses to neither approve nor veto legislation. The largest law enforcement agency in Virginia is the Virginia State Police, with 3,022 sworn and civilian members . The Virginia Marine Police patrol coastal areas, and were founded as the "Oyster Navy" in 1864 in response to oyster bed poaching. The Virginia Capitol Police protect the legislature and executive department, and are the oldest police department in the United States, dating to the guards who protected the colonial leadership. The governor can also call upon the Virginia National Guard, which consists of approximately 7,200 army soldiers, 1,200 airmen, 300 Defense Force members, and 400 civilians. The death penalty was abolished in 2021. Over 1,300 people have been executed by the state since 1608, including 113 following the resumption of capital punishment in 1982. Virginia's prison system incarcerates 30,936 people , 53% of whom are Black, and the state has the sixteenth-highest rate of incarceration in the country, at 422 per 100,000 residents. Prisoner parole was ended in 1995, and Virginia's rate of recidivism of released felons who are re-convicted within three years and sentenced to a year or more is 23.1%, the lowest in the country . Virginia has the fourth lowest violent crime rate and thirteenth lowest property crime rate . Between 2008 and