Considering Murphy on Human Executioners

I am very grateful to Jeffrie Murphy for his response to my paper1 and to Jonathan Jacobs for the chance to respond in turn to Murphy’s criticisms. It is a particular honor for me to respond to Jeffrie Murphy, whose inspiring writings on retribution, the emotions, and human interaction I have long admired and taken as a guiding point for my own work. No excuses, however: I do not mean to attribute the weaknesses in the paper under discussion to Murphy’s influence, or to curry favor. Murphy places some significant charges at my door; in what follows I re-state his target as I understand it, and then examine whether my argument has the resources to meet his criticisms.