On almost all other hot-button issues in U.S. politics—abortion, gay marriage, immigration, tax policy, affirmative action, foreign policy—many heartfelt voices can be found on all sides of the debate. Capital punishment is an odd exception. "With most people that would say they're in favor, it's just sort of a reflexive opinion," says John Blume of Cornell Law School's Death Penalty Project. "You don't meet a lot of people who wake up in the morning and say, 'Okay, let's go get some people executed.' "

But that doesn't mean there's no one to argue for capital punishment. Blume and Dieter both start their short list of death-penalty champions with the same person: a scholar named Kent Scheidegger, the top lawyer at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a small think tank in Sacramento, California. For nearly 30 years, Scheidegger has dedicated his professional life to defending the death penalty. And he's often the go-to wonk for his side of the debate. When California's death penalty was ruled unconstitutional in July, it was Scheidegger who provided outlets from The New York Times to the Los Angeles Times to NPR with their sole quote decrying the judge's decision. Page back through years of similar coverage, and his name pops up again and again. "I think even for supporters of the death penalty, if you had them rank what they care about the most, it wouldn't be high on their list," Blume argues. In that respect, he says, Scheidegger is "a lone wolf."

The truth, of course, is that Scheidegger isn't the only scholar putting forth arguments for the death penalty. He's joined by, among others, Robert Blecker of New York Law School; Joshua Marquis, a district attorney in Oregon who often speaks on the topic; and William Otis, an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. But with the national death-penalty debate revolving increasingly around California, Scheidegger is, at this point, the leading public advocate for a movement that has very few spokesmen.

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Scheidegger grew up in Vienna, Virginia, just outside Washington, and his ambition from a young age was to serve in the military. He spent six years in the Air Force after graduating from college, earning his law degree while on active duty. When we spoke recently, he said his passion for military service and his feelings about the death penalty came from "the same core beliefs." "I think the main purpose of government is to protect people from enemies, foreign and domestic," he told me. "Military service and law enforcement are two sides of the same coin."

I asked Scheidegger about the origins of this animating philosophy, but he couldn't pinpoint them. It wasn't his parents; they were liberals and enthusiastic supporters of the civil-rights movement who carried him along when they handed out campaign literature. "It's a fair question, but I don't have a fair answer," he says. "I wouldn't say I was a reaction. I just charted my own path." (Unlike some death-penalty advocates, Scheidegger has never been personally affected by violent crime. He also has never attended an execution.)