Capital punishment, performed by the State, pre-dates the Old Testament. Until the 1950's, few in this country gave it a second thought, in cases of murder or treason. Now, as always, capital punishment has overwhelming public support.

The 1948 case of Caryl Chessman, a career criminal, who was nabbed as the Red Light Bandit in Los Angeles, and the 1954 case of Dr. Sam Sheppard in Cleveland, both received tremendous media attention. Chessman, executed in 1960, was raised up as a martyr by the arts and croissants crowd, presumably because he wrote four books, and was not the cliché common thug.

The Sheppard case inspired "The Fugitive," and in numerous re-trials went on for 46 years. Sheppard died in April, 1970, after being found not guilty in his 1966 second trial. Nevertheless, public opinion held that the 1954 guilty verdict was the right one. Both the 1966 verdict and Sheppard's somewhat mediagenic appearance made him a poster boy for the anti capital punishment forces.

In October, 1995, a civil case was filed on behalf of Sheppard's estate to upgrade the "not guilty" verdict to "innocent." DNA evidence was introduced, but was inconclusive. In this final chapter, Sheppard's good name was not restored, as the jury found for the State.

Undeterred by public opinion, the no death penalty folks were successful--for a brief time--with an end run to the Supreme Court in 1972. Flush with this success, the Left gave us Roe v. Wade, which persists to this day. Capital punishment, courtesy of a different Supreme Court, came back.

Legal affairs writer Ann Coulter reminds us that the minority against capital punishment has concocted all sorts of dubious arguments in their attempts to sway public opinion. A few years ago it was racism.

It was widely proclaimed that blacks were more likely to receive the death penalty than whites. Then the facts came out. Considering the percentage of murders committed by each race, more white murderers are sentenced to death. And, they are executed more quickly than blacks.

Was this a problem for race-baiters? Sadly, it wasn't. They simply spun things a little bit differently. Given that black murderers were getting the death penalty less than whites, and since the majority of killers would murder within their own race, this meant that a capital defendant was more likely to get death if his victim was white!

True enough, and therefore, the American Justice system is placing a higher value of the lives of whites, by exacting this punishment.

A 1985 study claimed that in the 20th century alone, 350 "innocent" people had been convicted of capital or "potentially capital" crimes, and that 23 innocents had been put to death. Not surprisingly, this study was hailed in the liberal media, although it too was debunked.

The category "potentially capital" included many cases in which the death penalty was not even a possible penalty, and many in which this was not the sentence imposed--thus artificially jacking up the numbers.

Worse, though, the documentation on whom might be innocent was laughable, consisting mostly of what the defense attorneys thought, and in one case actually relied on a fictional account of a crime scenario.

When the dust settled, it was shown quite convincingly that there is no documented case of a factually innocent person being executed for at least the past 50 years.

What about the recent heavily touted DNA exonerations?

DNA evidence can be powerful, but is by no means universally applicable. Moreover, there are few capital cases that are made by bodily fluid evidence alone. And, just because the perp's DNA is not found at the crime scene doesn't mean he didn't do it. Heck, even if it IS found there, he may still get off (OJ Simpson). Casting the few exonerations that may now come out as "proven innocent" instead of merely increasing the doubt, is a wee bit disingenuous.

It's a lot more accurate to conclude that the best method of avoiding the death penalty is to not commit a capital crime.