Amendment 8 As it Relates to Two Different Court Cases

8th Amendment

Amendment 8 - Cruel and Unusual Punishment

The Eighth Amendment (Amendment VII) to the American constitution is part of the American Bill of Rights which was ratified in 1789. The Amendment was to prohibit the States government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment. The Eighth Amendment was adopted in 1971 as part of the Bill of Rights in the United States where the parliament declared "as their ancestors in like cases have usually done...that excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (Harper, 2007)." In summary, the paper will discuss the Eighth Amendment (Amendment VII) to the American constitution as well as what and how it is controversial.

According to the Supreme Court, the Eighth Amendment prohibits some penalties and bars punishments which tend to be excessive when compared to crime or any other competence of criminals. The Eight Amendments states that "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." For instance, in 1947, the Supreme Court expected that, the case of Francis v. Resweber to the States through the due process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In 1962, the court had another case involving Robinson v. California, of which they ruled out to be applying to fourteenth Amendments of the United States. Under which the Supreme Court applied the case of Robinson as the first case in the Eight Amendments aligned with the State Governments through the fourteenth Amendments (Harper, 2007).

Controversies of the Eighth Amendments

Conversely, the Justice Potter Stewart argued out that, "infliction of cruel and unusual punishment is in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." Since various framers such as John Bingham of the fourteenth amendment discussed the subject in regards to the cases overhead in the United States involving oppression within the State legislation of the Union.

Many instances of injustices as well as oppression in the State are up-to-date occurring in the State legislation causing flagrant violations of privileges to the citizens of America, in which the government can only be furnished by the law but not remedies whatever (Tanenhaus, 2008). Contrary, harsh and rare punishments have been imposed under state laws in this union upon inhabitants, not only for offences committed, but for the sacred duties one does, for which the State provided no solution. It is also on record that, Justice Brennan expected no state rule pass a law clearly violating any of these principles, and so the court's decision on the 8th amendment could include accumulative analysis of each of the four principles and so the United States Supreme court said that punishment will be cruel and unusual if it was to serve for the crime, if it was arbitrary, and if it offended the sense of justice in the society or if it was not effective than a severe penalty (Tanenhaus, 2008).

The Supreme Court also comments that drawing and quartering or disembowelment constituted cruel and unusual punishment regardless of the crime. It declare executing the mentally handicapped and executing people who are under 18 years of age at the time the crime was committed to be violations of the Eighth Amendments regardless of the crime as in the case of Roper v. Simmons (Tanenhaus, 2008). The Supreme Court exercised judicial review to change a criminal sentence as cruel and unusual, they overturned the punishment called Cadena Temporal which included hard and painful labor for the duration of incarceration and permanent civil disabilities. Others have written that announcing a constitutional requirement of proportionality as in the case of Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349(1910). The Supreme Court had it that punishing a natural- born inhabitant for a crime by taking away his Citizenship is not constitutional and very primitive than torture itself as it involved the total destruction of the individual's status in an organized society (Vile, 2010).