Year
2021
Season
Spring
Paper Type
Master's Thesis
College
College of Arts and Sciences
Degree Name
Master of Arts in Practical Philosophy and Applied Ethics (MA)
Department
Philosophy and Religious Studies
NACO controlled Corporate Body
University of North Florida. Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
First Advisor
Dr. Andrew Buchwalter
Second Advisor
Dr. Mitchell Haney
Rights Statement
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Third Advisor
Dr. Hans-Herbert Koegler
Department Chair
Dr. Andrew Buchwalter
College Dean
George Rainbolt
Abstract
Jacksonville is nationally recognized as being a city that disproportionately places defendants on death row. The author, who has been both a prosecutor and an appellate attorney representing inmates on death row in Jacksonville, believes that the high number of death sentences being issued in this city, at the recommendation of juries, is driven by a strong retributive intuition held by a significant part of Jacksonville’s society. This thesis evaluates the views of three philosophers who played influential roles in the resurgence of retributive theory in the latter half of the twentieth century in America, in seeking to identify and then criticize, in a manner that would be persuasive to a layperson, a defense of pure retributive justice. However, the author found that each of these three philosophers either waivered in maintaining the robust version of retributivism which they claimed to defend, or they attempted to defend that position in a manner that would be uncompelling for this hypothetical layperson juror.
Suggested Citation
Hamrick, Joseph S., "Retributive Justice, Capital Punishment, and Jurors in Northeast Florida" (2021). UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1036.
https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/1036