Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The 8th Amendment also forbids “cruel and unusual punishment.” The 14th Amendment extends that prohibition against the States, Robinson v. California, 1962.

The Supreme Court decided its first cruel and unusual case in Wilkerson v. Utah, 1879. There a territorial court had sentenced a convicted murderer to death by a firing squad. The Court held that this punishment was not forbidden by the Constitution. The kinds of penalties the Constitution intended to prevent, said the Court, were such barbaric tortures as burning at the stake, crucifixion, drawing and quartering, “and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty.” The Court took the same position a few years later when, for the first time, it upheld the electrocution of a convicted murderer, In re Kemmler, 1890.

Since then, the Court has heard only a handful of cruel and unusual cases, except for those relating to capital punishment. More often than not, the Court has rejected the cruel and unusual punishment argument. The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment is limited to criminal matters. It does not forbid paddling or similar punishments in the public schools, Ingraham v. Wright, 1977. Louisiana v. Resweber, 1947, is fairly typical. There the Court found that it was not unconstitutional to subject a convicted murderer to a second electrocution after the chair had failed to work properly on the first occasion.

The Court also denied the cruel and unusual claim in a recent case involving California’s “three strikes” law, Lockyer v. Andrade, 2003. That law provides that any person convicted of a crime for a third time must be sent to prison for at least 25 years. Leonard Andrade had received 50 years for stealing $153.54 worth of children’s videos from two K-Mart stores. The K-Mart thefts were treated as separate offenses and he had an earlier burglary conviction on his record. However, the Court has held some punishments to be cruel and unusual, although only a few. It did so for the first time in Weems v. United States, 1910.

There, the Court overturned the conviction of a Coast Guard official convicted of falsifying government pay records. He had been sentenced to 15 years at hard labor, constantly chained at ankle and wrist. In Robinson v. California, 1962, the Court held that a State law defining narcotics addiction as a crime to be punished, rather than an illness to be treated, violated the 8th and 14th amendments. But, notice, that does not mean that buying, selling, or possessing narcotics cannot be made a crime. Such criminal laws are designed to punish persons for their behavior, not for being ill. In Estelle v. Gamble, 1976, it ruled that a Texas prison inmate could not properly be denied needed medical care.