The Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution protects us to not be putted into cruel and unusual punishments, but when it comes to the death penalty, things become more complicated. In my personal opinion, I believe the absolute interpretation of the 8th Amendment and that the death penalty undoubtedly violates the 8th Amendment. Looking at the case of “Furman v. Georgia (1972)”, the Court invalidated death penalty laws in the end because the justices considered the punishment of the death penalty was too cruel and unusual to the Furman’ sin, accidentally killing people, and disproportionately using the death penalty would result in more serious problems to the poor and minorities. This decision fully reflected the reliability of …show more content…
Comparing these two cases, the legal system did not really work fairly to show justice because if in accordance with the absolute interpretation of the 8th Amendment and the 14th Amendment, Gregg will never be sentence to death; this not only unfair to him but also disrespects for the authority of the legal system. Let us finally look at the case of “Callins v. Collins” in 1994, in this case, even though the convict Callins was put to death by lethal injection, there was a justice stood up to struggle on save Callins’ life, and his name was Harry Andrew Blackmun, who had voted in “Gregg v. Georgia” to restore the death penalty. Blackmun claimed that he had no longer supported the death penalty because he did not believe that the capital sentencing procedures were still working, and restoring the death penalty was a big …show more content…
Nonetheless, the choice of most people does not mean that is correct. I personally support the Prop.62 because it repeals the death penalty; the most immediate benefit that repealing the death penalty will have is that saving of $170 million per year, and the prisoners will have enough time to repent their offenses and work and pay restitution to victims' families. We need to learn from prisoners to see what lead them to crime and find what should be improved better in our society in order to prevent future crime. The majority in CA support the Prop.66 which was designed to support the death penalty and shorten the time that legal challenges to death sentences. These supporters believe that keeping the death penalty would be effective deterrent to crime, and changing the death penalty procedures to speed up the appeals process would effectively solve the problems that death penalty has such as too much cost. Undeniably, shorten the procedures’ time could save taxpayers millions of dollars, but the Prop.66 also leads out of new problems. For instance, it becomes pretty hard for the courts to review some extremely complex cases in the short timeline, and it is really easy to make mistake when there’s no enough time to review the cases. Therefore, even though Prop.66 defeated Prop.62, this does not mean Prop.66 is the right one. In addition, herd
You don't have to worry about a criminal committing the same crime twice, why? Because they won't be alive to even think about it!. The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution states “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”, in other words, it protects American citizens from excessive or unnecessary punishments, fines, and bails. However, the death penalty is still an exception to “cruel and unusual punishments” when the punishment does not violate the standards of the Eighth Amendment. Based on the creation of death penalty in the eighth amendment, the constitution can be claimed as an inconsistently valuable but viable document in modern America. The death penalty also known as capital punishment is one that brings a lot of controversies but at the same time has been practiced throughout history in different forms and styles.
In the United States Constitution, the 8th Amendment prohibits the use and practices of cruel and unusual punishment. What exactly is considered to be cruel and unusual punishment? This question is a hot topic among America's many different current controversies. Many people are saying that the use of capital punishment (to be sentenced to death as a penalty in the eyes of the law [a capital crime]. An execution [capital punishment]) is a direct violation of the 8th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (Capital Punishment). They say there should be another way to deal with these criminals other than having them executed. The purpose of this paper is to give a brief history of the death penalty
The eighth Amendment states that the government is prohibited from cruel and unusual punishment. The death penalty is a complete violation of this amendment. Every one, guilty or innocent has the right to live freely, and the government taking away this simplicity of rights, is unconstitutional.
In 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty systems then in place were unconstitutional violations of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual” punishments. In response to the decision many states changed their death penalty systems. Four years later in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Court reaffirmed the death penalty as constitutional. Troy Gregg had been found guilty of murder and armed robbery and sentenced to death. He asked the Court to go further than it had in the Furman case, and rule the death penalty itself unconstitutional (n.d.,Web).
That question is a debate that has been occuring for years. The supreme court has previously ruled that the dealth penalty is not cruel and unusual punishment there for it is not violating the eighth amendment in any way. Despite how the supreme court has ruled the death penalty, there is still many arguments till this day on whether or not it should fall under cruel and unusual punishment. In 1972, the case Furman V. Georgia was brought in front of the supreme court to rule whether or not they believed the dealth penality was cruel and unusual. This case almost ruled out the death penalty, but that didn't last very long. In 1976, the case Gregg V. Georgia came in front of the Supreme Court and the earlier decision was changed because a majority vote believed that the dealth penalty was not cruel and unusual. Eventually four principals were established to decided whether or not punishment was cruel and unusual. The four questions were, is it degrading to human dignity? Is it arbitary? Is it rejected throughout society? Is it unnecessary? Which many states ended up believing that the death penalty were along the lines of those four principals. Clayton Lockett might be a tragic example of the death penalty going bad. He was getting injected, but the injection didn't kill him up until an hour after it was injected. He had to sit there and suffer and many would of
The famous Founding Fathers of the United States created critical documents to protect the citizens of the country they were establishing. These documents included the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The latter, the Bill of Rights, ensures certain rights to all citizens, and the Eighth Amendment in particular, protects citizens against cruel or unusual punishments for breaking the law. When analyzing the protection under the Eighth Amendment one must also look at all the aspects of the law including: the history of the law, the modern uses and abuses of the law, and the law’s current effectiveness.
Hannah Patrick, one has only to look at some of the cases such as Coker v. Georgia to feel that the death penalty does not violate the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. However, the U.S. Supreme Court says it is excessive punishment for the rape of an adult woman and that it violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In Coker v. Georgia, the defendant raped a woman and stabbed her to death. Eight months later he kidnapped another woman, raped her twice, and abandoned her to die after biting her severely. While he was serving multiple life terms in prison, he escaped and kidnapped, raped, and robbed a third woman at knifepoint (LeSage, 1978). I do not see how you can read about this case and decide as the U.S. Supreme Court did.
The Eighth Amendment, ratified in 1791, and it had three clauses. The clauses are Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Excessive Fines, and Excessive bail. The Cruel and Unusual Punishment means that the state and federal government restrict how extreme the punishment is to a person who has done a crime. This clause is made so that the people that are accused are not tortured and killed cruelly. The Excessive Fines restrict the state and federal government the amount of money a person fined for a crime. This clause created was so that the government cannot take a lot of your money away. The Excessive bail means that courts can’t give a tremendous amount of bond to a person who has broken the law. This clause created so that the judge and jury cannot already make their decision before the case even begins. This is why the saying “an accused is presumed innocent until found guilty” is established.
The eighth amendment helps letting americans not have to go through unusual and cruel punishments. “It is not just criminal sentences themselves that are subject to the cruel and unusual test; the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual provision has been used to challenge prison conditions such as extremely unsanitary cells, overcrowding, insufficient medical care and deliberate failure by officials to protect inmates from one another,” (“Eighth Amendment,” Annenberg Classroom). This site explains and breaks down the eighth amendment. It becomes apparent that this amendment helps protect the people from usual and cruel punishments. There are specific examples to a cruel and unusual punishments. “Cruel and unusual punishment includes torture, deliberately degrading punishment, or punishment that is too severe for the crime committed,” (Dictionary.com). This is a basic understanding for how we can make sure to stay away from these types of punishments. One of the biggest oppositions or conflicts with the eighth amendment there is is the death penalty. The question that comes from it is whether or not the death penalty can be considered a cruel and unusual punishment. “Eighth
The Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits the punishments that may be imposed by the government on American citizens. These limits are compulsory among the states by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 expressed concern with arbitrary and disproportionate sanctions, giving way to the Founders inclusion of the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. To explore the Eighth Amendment it is important to consider constitutionally accepted punishments, the ever-evolving practice of capital punishment, and eighth amendment protection inside prison walls.
The U.S. Constitutional Rights are laws that guarantee the basic rights for the citizens.There are twenty-seven Constitutional Amendments in total, but 10 of them represent The Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights ensures the basic individual protections such as freedom of speech and religion. The Bill of Rights became part of the Constitution in December 15, 1791 by George Mason.
The Court did, however, state that the mandatory use of the death penalty would be prohibited under the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment. The defendant in this case, Gregg, had been convicted on two counts of armed robbery and two counts of murder. The jury was instructed by the trial judge, who was following Georgia state law, to return with either a decision of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Justice Byron stated in his opinion that Gregg had failed in his burden of showing that the Georgia Supreme Court had not done all it could to prevent discriminatory practices in the forming of his sentence. This decision became the first time the Court stated that "punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution." (Bernstein 21) The punishment also cannot be “grossly out of proportion to the severity of the crime charged, nor can it violate the convicted individual’s dignity.
The Eighth Amendment is intended to protect prisoners before they’re tried and after they’re convicted. It restricts excessive bail, fines, and cruel and unusual punishments. When looking back at laws from early America compared to the laws now, they were dramatically different regarding the death penalty. For example, in the 1600s, the Divine, Moral and Martial Laws, which provided the death penalty for even minor offenses such as stealing grapes, killing chickens, and trading with Indians, was proposed. Now, capital or first degree murder are typically the only offenses that will result in the death penalty as a punishment, where a couple hundred years ago people could get executed for simple, foolish offenses. Additionally, the Roper v.
The eighth amendment is designed to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. Conservation of the United States Constitution, and all moral ideologies have been set aside. An old form of barbaric punishment and the saying "eye for an eye" is still being widely accepted by Americans today. The old form of barbaric punishment is capital punishment. No matter how "humane" the death penalty has become, it is still the killing of another human being. When people stand outside prisons and cheer that an individual was murdered, there is a problem. When people justify the killing of another person, there
An Impassioned Debate: An overview of the death penalty in America depicts the facts about the eighth amendment. The eighth amendment is the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments (Masci 1). There are two significant cases that have inflamed the debate over the capital punishment, The Baze v. Reese case, and the Kennedy v. Louisiana case. The first case reveals the strong debate that the execution by lethal injection is inhuman and in violation of the eight amendment. The second case inflamed the