United States[edit] The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states that cruel and unusual punishments [shall not be] inflicted. The general principles the United States Supreme Court relied on to decide whether or not a particular punishment was cruel and unusual were determined by Justice William Brennan.[3] In Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), Justice Brennan wrote, There are, then, four principles by which we may determine whether a particular punishment is cruel and unusual. The essential predicate is that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity, especially torture. A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion. (Furman v. Georgia temporarily suspended capital punishment for this reason.) A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society. A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary. And he added: The function of these principles, after all, is simply to provide means by which a court can determine whether a challenged punishment comports with human dignity. They are, therefore, interrelated, and, in most cases, it will be their convergence that will justify the conclusion that a punishment is cruel and unusual. The test, then, will ordinarily be a cumulative one: if a punishment is unusually severe, if there is a strong probability that it is inflicted arbitrarily, if it is substantially rejected by contemporary society, and if there is no reason to believe that it serves any penal purpose more effectively than some less severe punishment, then the continued infliction of that punishment violates the command of the Clause that the State may not inflict inhuman and uncivilized punishments upon those convicted of crimes. Continuing, he wrote that he expected that no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a cumulative analysis of the implication of each of the four principles. In this way the United States Supreme Court set the standard that a punishment would be cruel and unusual [,if] it was too severe for the crime, [if] it was arbitrary, if it offended societys sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a less severe penalty.[
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 05:54:30 +0000
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