Is the death penalty unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment"? According to the U.S. Supreme Court, the answer is "Yes" - and "No." In other words, "It depends. In Furman vs. Georgia, which was decided this week (June 29) in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and violated the Eighth Amendment because it was applied in "arbitrary and capricious ways."
Even in cases they decide not to review, justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are not shy about openly debating the hot-button issue of capital punishment. Justice John Paul Stevens famously used the vehicle of a statement accompanying a denial of certiorari to explain his contention that the death penalty system violated the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
...He was convicted and sentenced to death under a state statute authorizing capital punishme...584, which barred the use of the death penalty as punishment for the rape of an adult woman but l... be punished by death consistent with the Eighth Amendment. Reasoning that children are a class in ...
If you read only the briefs in Baze, you might get the sense that the purpose of the prohibition is narrow: to eliminate physical pain from punishment The legal question is whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits all "unnecessary risk of pain and suffering" in the imposition of the death penalty, or simply the "substantial risk of wanton and unnecessary pain, torture, or lingering death." While the Supreme Court decided in the 1970s that the death penalty need not violate the Constitution, there is no reason that state legislatures cannot judge for themselves that it constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment.
... practice, and current writings on the death penalty. Relying on the Fourteenth Amendment's Du...
The Supreme Court ruled in Loving v. United States that Congress could delegate to the executive the constitutional authority to decide the aggravating factors required by the Eighth Amendment for capital punishment in military capital cases. The Court correctly assumed in this decision that the Eighth Amendment's cruel and unusual punishment provision and its death penalty jurisprudence constitutionally require that the current military death penalty scheme include aggravating factors. The traditional standard of deference to the military is inappropriate in a capital case.
Kentucky's three drug lethal injection death penalty procedure complies with the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled. Kentucky employs the three-drug injection method currently used by over 30 states and the federal government. The first drug renders the inmate unconscious, the second drug is a muscle relaxant and the third drug, potassium chloride, causes death. The state conducts monthly training with staff to ensure proper administration of the drugs. In addition, both the prison warden and deputy warden are trained and present during executions to address problems with drug administration.
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday concerning whether the imposition of the death penalty on 16- and 17-year-olds constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the juvenile death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment and set aside the death sentence of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in September 1993 when he and 15-year-old Charlie Benjamin took a Jefferson County woman, Shirley Crook, to Castlewood State Park in St. Louis County and pushed her - with her face covered with duct tape and her hands and feet bound together - over a railroad trestle into the Meramec River. In 1994, a jury found Simmons guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty, which Judge Timothy Patt...
... Court has examined the proportionality of a death sentence for the crimes of murder and rape. It hass also examined the penalty in light of specific categories of defendants, inc... on the use of the death penalty under the Eighth Amendment no longer permit the State to execute fe...
The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday concerning whether the imposition of the death penalty on 16- and 17-year-olds constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Last year, the Missouri Supreme Court held that the juvenile death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment and set aside the death sentence of Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in September 1993 when he and 15-year-old Charlie Benjamin took a Jefferson County woman, Shirley Crook, to Castlewood State Park in St. Louis County and pushed her - with her face covered with duct tape and her hands and feet bound together - over a railroad trestle into the Meramec River. In 1994, a jury found Simmons guilty of first-degree murder and recommended the death penalty, which Judge Timothy Patt...
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