nvicted murderers. The proposal seeks to make the death penalty applicable to a wider range of crimes that result in murder. Traditionally capital crimes of treason and espionage required the death penalty. Today, abolitionists and retentionists alike are preoccupied with the far more frequent death sentences for murder, rape, and other crimes of personal violence.
The most sustained defense of the death penalty today comes from those whose official responsibilities are in law enforcement, ranging from those who must detect, arrest, and control persons charged with (or convicted of) capital crimes to those who draft death penalty legislation, argue for capital convictions in trial courts, or write the briefs to persuade appellate courts to uphold death sentences. There are also scholars, essayists, moralists, and members of the learned and academic professions who have come to the defense of the death penalty in recent years. By their efforts they have in effect brought up to date the long tradition of notable philosophers (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill) who defended the death penalties of their day. Widely shared views by proponents of the death penalty especially stress the appropriateness of the moral indignation that grave criminal offenses provoke, and imply that the death penalty alone adequately expresses this indignation.
Proponents frequently reiterate the justifications for use of the death penalty in heinous crimes, particularly where law enforcement agents are concerned. Proponents argue that the death of a law enforcement agent inflicted while that agent is acting in the line of duty is somewhat different and apart from other criminal homicides. The law enforcement agent, while protecting citizens, willingly subjects [self] to a greater element of danger than most persons ever experience. The agent is not, however, willing to be the victim of the criminal who uses violence as the method of obta...