When Leslie Beasley was sentenced to death for murdering Philadelphia Police Officer Ernest Davis, Ronald Reagan had recently entered the White House and John "Jordan" Lewis was not even born.

Beasley, 58, with 28 years and three months served on death row, is the dean of Pennsylvania's condemned cop killers.

There are 11 of them, including six from Philadelphia, according to the state Department of Corrections. In all, 221 people are on death row for the crime of first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances.

Lewis, 23, will be the next among that lot if the District Attorney's Office has its way.

Opening arguments are set to begin this morning in the murder trial of the bulky, North Philadelphia high-school dropout who is accused of firing a bullet into the brain of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy on Oct. 31, 2007. The 25-year department veteran, husband and father of three, died the next day. He was 54.

But even if the jury finds Lewis guilty, then sentences him to death, he's likely to have many years ahead of him on death row.

That's because the lengthy federal and state appeals process afforded to defendants in capital cases has rendered the death penalty virtually comatose. Since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, six Pennsylvania governors have signed 364 death warrants, but just three inmates have been executed, according to the Department of Corrections.

The executions of Keith Zettlemoyer and Leon Moser in 1995, and Gary Heidnik in 1999, were carried out only after they had dropped all appeals.

The other condemned inmates use appeals like lifelines to stay put indefinitely.

Beasley, for example, has survived death warrants signed by three governors. He was actually convicted and sentenced to death twice for two 1980 murders - Officer Davis' in July and civilian Keith Singleton's in April.

Overall, no death warrants are active on any of the 221 death-row inmates, said Susan Bensinger, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections.

The reprieves fuel mounting frustration for the family members of slain victims. "Hurry up and lay him on the table," Michael Caesar, 30, said of Christopher Roney after a March court hearing, during which Roney's public defenders argued to have his death sentence tossed out due to childhood abuse and depression.

He was sentenced to death for the Jan. 2, 1996, shooting death of Caesar's mother, Officer Lauretha Vaird. Roney, now 39, shot Vaird in the abdomen while robbing a Feltonville PNC Bank, making the single mother of two sons the first female Philadelphia police officer slain in the line of duty.

"The bottom line is, [Roney] had a choice - to walk out the door or stay and do what he did," Caesar said. "He deserves the death penalty. My whole family is hurting behind this."

Michael Piecuch, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, said that the system is being "thwarted" by anti-death penalty judges who've placed a de facto moratorium on capital punishment.

"That does not give light at the end of the tunnel for victims and prosecutors who work so hard on these cases," he said.

"The issue is not really in the statute and the rules of the appellate procedure, but in the implicit message of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals that there is a de facto moratorium," he continued. "The Third Circuit Court will not uphold a death-penalty sentence in Pennsylvania."

Last year, that federal court threw out the death sentence of the state's most notorious inmate - Mumia Abu-Jamal. The former Black Panther Party member and onetime radio talker has become internationally famous for fighting his execution for more than 26 years.

Convicted of murdering Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, Abu-Jamal, 55, is serving a life sentence without parole while awaiting word from the U.S. Supreme Court on whether his death sentence will be reinstated.

Mark Bergstrom, executive director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, said that he also believes that death sentences are not being carried out due to the federal courts.

"One of the key things about sentencing is that you are able to follow through and carry out the sentence," he said. "There does seem to be a disconnect if our statute is valid and sentences are not being carried out."

But William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which advocates for prisoners' rights, said that the death penalty is unpopular because innocent men have been exonerated while on death row and it does nothing to stop crime.

"If this were a way to bring Officer Cassidy back, fine," he said. "But we know that's impossible. We also know that this death penalty has not served as a deterrent. So what is to be gained?

"The death penalty is such a terminal sentence, there's no going back, and people have begun to question whether we should be doing that at all."

Even in the age of terrorism and mass murderers like D.C. Sniper John Allen Muhammad, who was executed by Virginia on Tuesday night, imposing the death penalty is still a tough sell for many. It took prosecutors and defense lawyers four days to find 12 jurors to hear Lewis' case, which is expected to run three weeks. Many of the more than 300 potential jurors said that they were opposed to capital punishment.

Families of victims are all over the map with their stances on the death penalty, said Kate Roach, program director for Families of Murder Victims, a nonprofit that sends staff to accompany family members during court proceedings. Some want the death penalty imposed when it is not legally permissible, while others never express interest in the ultimate punishment, she said.

"What is becoming very apparent to me is there is not a lot of knowledge about the law," Roach said. "People look at the death penalty in black-and-white, but there is a lot more complexity to it. People are transfixed by television, 'Law & Order' and 'Boston Legal.' But that's not what we do."

Television of another sort will be used against Lewis at trial. Police have said that a surveillance camera inside the West Oak Lane Dunkin' Donuts that he was robbing at gunpoint captured him turning and firing at Cassidy as the officer entered the store.

Then, after he was arrested in Miami days later, Lewis told a scrum of reporters and cameras that, "Yes," he had confessed.