Florida , U. Further, if a court does impose a life sentence, it must also provide the offender with a "realistic opportunity to obtain release. In Miller v. Alabama , U. In Ingraham v. Wright , U. This standard was refined in Whitley v. Albers , U. Pelzer , U. His death sentence was reversed by the Supreme Court in Louisiana's Angola prison has long been the source of prisoner blues. In , Keith McMillan, a handcuffed inmate who was badly beaten by guards at Angola, won a victory at the Supreme Court that allowed him to pursue his action for damages.
The Court said his beating constituted cruel and unusual punishment. Introduction What exactly is a "cruel and unusual punishment" within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment?
Did the framers intend only to ban punishments-- such as "drawing and quartering" a prisoner, or having him boiled in oil or burned at the stake--that were recognized as cruel at the time of the amendment's adoption? Or did they expect that the list of prohibited punishments would change over time as society's "sense of decency" evolved?
One clue to the expectations of the framers comes from the debates of the First Congress that proposed the Eighth Amendment. On the floor of the House, Representative Livermore complained about the vagueness of the amendment's language: "It is sometimes necessary to hang a man, villains often deserve a whipping, and perhaps having their ears cut off, but are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting those punishments because they are 'cruel'?
The Supreme Court in the case of Trop v Dulles , expressly endorsed the view that what are prohibited "cruel and unusual punishments" should change over time, being those punishments which offend society's "evolving sense of decency. In Frances v Resweber , the Court considers whether a state can put a condemned man on an electric chair a second time, after sending a non-lethal bolt of electricity through him in its first attempt.
By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court in Frances permits the second execution, with the majority concluding that the "cruelty" of the punishment at issue should not be measured by what happened in the past or the mental anguish the prisoner might feel as he awaits his second date with the chair. The four dissenters, however, contended that the sequence of events was relevant, and that no one would doubt but that a punishment that consisted of two jolts of electricity weeks apart would be cruel. In the s, the Court addressed the constitutionality of the death penalty itself, finally concluding that, with proper procedures in place, the penalty was constitutional.
For a discussion of those cases, see the Death Penalty page on this site. Ingraham v Wright considered the use of corporal punishment in Florida public schools. In the case under consideration, one students was subjected to such a severe beating with a wooden paddle as to cause hematoma requiring medical attention and another was deprived of the use of his arm for a week.
By a 5 to 4 vote, however, the Court found that the punishment was not a violation of the Eighth Amendment because, it said, the framers were concerned solely with punishments in the criminal justice context and would not have intended the amendment's provisions to apply to discipline in the public schools. By this standard, the justices decided in that executing mentally retarded inmates was unconstitutional; in , they reached the same conclusion for juveniles who committed a capital crime while younger than eighteen.
We as a society are still deciding whether capital punishment remains morally acceptable and, if so, under what circumstances. The United States is one of only four countries—the other three are China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—that uses execution regularly, but we are no longer as convinced of its appropriateness as we once were.
Currently, twelve states and the District of Columbia have abolished the death penalty. Five states account for the overwhelming majority of executions in the United States—slightly more than one thousand from through Texas tops the list, with more than executions since Recently, the successful use of DNA evidence to challenge the accuracy of convictions has led some states—Illinois, Maryland, and Indiana, among others—to review capital sentences.
The Illinois governor was so disturbed by the number of errors—at least thirteen men wrongly convicted since —and the potential for more mistakes that he pardoned four men and commuted all other capital sentences to life imprisonment before he left office in Since , more than inmates nationally have been released from death row after new evidence revealed they were convicted wrongly.
Although support for capital punishment remains strong, recent surveys reveal that six in ten Americans now favor a moratorium on executions until questions about fairness are resolved. The history of the Eighth Amendment makes clear that its meaning is continually evolving. The Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, is a living document.
It did not fix our rights as they existed in times long past; it gave them room to grow. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The framers of the Bill of Rights did not define excessive or cruel and unusual punishments because they knew these concepts would take their meaning from the changing conditions of society. They expected us to judge in each election whether our government meets a high standard of morality and justice, as well as whether our laws express an acceptable balance between order and freedom.
In this way, we continually give fresh meaning to the rights that guard our liberty. All the justices for the majority and minority wrote opinions, making it difficult to know what standards states should use to judge whether or not capital punishment could ever be constitutional.
In order to assess whether or not death is an excessive or unnecessary penalty, it is necessary to consider the reasons why a legislature might select it as punishment for one or more offenses, and examine whether less severe penalties would satisfy the legitimate legislative wants as well as capital punishment.
If they would, then the death penalty is unnecessary cruelty, and, therefore, unconstitutional. There are six purposes conceivably served by capital punishment: retribution, deterrence, prevention of repetitive criminal acts, encouragement of guilty pleas and confessions, eugenics, and economy. It is not improper at this point to take judicial notice of the fact that for more than years men have labored to demonstrate that capital punishment serves no purpose that life imprisonment could not serve equally well.
And they have done so with great success. Little, if any, evidence has been adduced to prove the contrary. The point has now been reached at which deference to the legislatures is tantamount to abdication of our judicial roles as fact finders, judges, and ultimate arbiters of the Constitution. We know that at some point the presumption of constitutionality accorded legislative acts gives way to a realistic assessment of those acts.
This point comes when there is sufficient evidence available so that judges can determine, not whether the legislature acted wisely, but whether it had any rational basis whatsoever for acting. We have this evidence before us now. There is no rational basis for concluding that capital punishment is not excessive. It therefore violates the Eighth Amendment.
No nation in the recorded history of man has a greater tradition of revering justice and fair treatment for all its citizens in times of turmoil, confusion, and tension than ours. This is a country which stands tallest in troubled times, a country that clings to fundamental principles, cherishes its constitutional heritage, and rejects simple solutions that compromise the values that lie at the roots of our democratic system.
In striking down capital punishment, this Court does not malign our system of government. On the contrary, it pays homage to it. Only in a free society could right triumph in difficult times, and could civilization record its magnificent advancement. In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute. In his dissenting opinion in Furman v. The four dissenting justices argued that support of the death penalty in state legislatures was proof of its support by the public.
Hoping to give the cruel and unusual punishment clause a more workable application, the Supreme Court began to follow the "evolving standards of decency" test. In Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that the clause "must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.
Dulles , U. The Court continues to follow the evolving standards approach today. Under this view, unconstitutional punishments are limited to those that were historically unacceptable because of their inherent brutality. John F. Interpreted strictly, this minority approach would allow for any punishment that was still in practice by To the originalists' dismay, public opinion is crucial in evaluating whether a punishment is cruel and unusual under the evolving standards test.
The Supreme Court gauges this opinion in part by looking to the states' legislatures and juries. For example, the Court held that the death penalty is an unconstitutional punishment for the crime of rape.
Coker v. It rested its opinion in large part on the fact that only one of the 50 states authorized this sentence. It also focused on the reluctance of juries in that state to impose the death sentence for rape convictions. Similarly, the Court relied heavily on a trend toward abolition of the death penalty for the intellectually disabled and for minors. Atkins v. Virginia , U. Simmons , U. Importantly though, the Court has noted that it will not ignore its own judgment as to whether a punishment is reasonable.
Atkins , U. The evolving standards approach looks not only at the nature of the punishment in each case, but also whether it fits the severity of the crime. Courts look to the sentences for other criminals in the state where the crime occurred, and the sentences for the same crime in other states.
When more serious offenses result in less punishment than the punishment being examined, or when other states punish the identical crime less severely, a court is likely to conclude that the punishment does not fit the crime. However, a punishment is not unconstitutional simply because it is severe. The Eighth Amendment forbids only grossly excessive penalties.
0コメント