  This notion of killing as punishment can easily be connected to the issue of the death penalty. For deontological proponents of the death penalty, murderers can be executed because the nature of their crime merits death. While consequentialists add in other considerations such as the deterrent value of the death penalty, the deontological approach focuses on the moral desert that is connected to the guilt of the murderer. This notion of guilt—as a moral quality that adheres to an individual in light of his past actions—is also found in the idea that enemy combatants may be killed. Those individuals who are engaged in fighting have done something (or have adopted some characteristic) that makes it permissible to kill them.