Executions hit a four-decade high in the United States in 1997, implying that more murderers are being executed more quickly. But editor David Frum says that committing murder is still nine times safer than being drafted during the Vietnam War.

That's true although nearly 500,000 Americans were murdered in the two decades since capital punishment was resumed.

• From the beginning of 1977 through the end of 1996, American state and federal juries condemned more than 5,500 murders to death.

• In 1997, 74 killers were put to death, bringing the total since capital punishment resumed to 432.

• By contrast, in the 1930s the country executed between 150 and 200 criminals per year.

• And if we remove one state from the 1997 total -- Texas -- the number of executions in the other 49 actually dropped from 1996.

Furthermore, the length of time it takes to carry out a death sentence has steadily risen since 1976. Criminals executed in 1985 spent an average of six years on death row; those executed in 1990 an average of eight and a quarter years; and criminals executed in 1996 waited an average of ten and a half years.

Life sentences aren't being carried out either.

• The average killer, criminologist John DiIulio estimates, spends just eight and a half years in jail.

• Despite the half-million slayings since 1976, only about 100,000 killers are in prison today.

• In other words, some 70 percent of the men and women who have killed someone over the past two decades have either been released from prison or never were incarcerated the first place.

And all together, 94 percent of the killers sentenced to death since 1976 have evaded the punishment meted out to them by judge and jury.

Source: David Frum, "The Truth About the Chair," Weekly Standard, January 19, 1998.