Cruel And Unusual Punishment Research Paper

The right against cruel and unusual punishment and the death penalty is a highly discussed matter, especially with the Supreme Court. The death penalty is a highly controversial topic being discussed all over the country. There are 32 out of the 50 states that consent to execution for first degree murder, treason, kidnapping, aggravated rape, the murder of a police or corrections officer, and murder while under a life sentence are punishable by the death sentence in some jurisdictions. Where states like Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland are of the states eradicating the death penalty. Illinois abolished its capital punishment statute in 2011 and replaced it with life in prison without the opportunity of parole. In 2012 Connecticut also repealed
Where many consider the death penalty to be cruel and unusual punishment some believe that long delays caused by the government in carrying out the execution may render the punishment unconstitutionally cruel and unusual. In 1997 the Louisiana Supreme Court upheld the state’s year old child statute, which permits for the imposition (force) of capital sentence when a victim is less than twelve years old. The case involved an AIDS infected father who raped his three daughters, ages five, eight, and nine. In maintaining the father’s death sentence Louisiana ruled that child rape is “like no other crime.” However eleven years later in 2008 the Supreme Court dealt with the Kennedy v. Louisiana case where the Supreme Court ruled that the eighth amendment bars Louisiana (and other states) from imposing the death penalty for child rape where the crime did not end or was not intended to result in the victim’s
The majority of states that entertain the death penalty permit execution through lethal injection. The second most common mean is electrocution. Hanging, the gas chamber, and firing squads have all survived at least as options available to the condemned in a few states. In 2008 the Supreme Court dealt with the Baze v. Rees case where the capital punishment of lethal injection involving a three-drug “cocktail” used by Kentucky does not violate the eighth amendment because it does not create unnecessary infliction of pain, torture, or lingering death. In 1878 Wilkerson v. Utah was one of the earliest cases the Supreme Court had dealing with the death penalty. It raised concerns about the eighth amendment questioning shooting as a cruel and unusual technique to execute through the death penalty. The court disagreed saying that using a firing squad was civil compared to what techniques were used around the time the Bill of Rights was written. In 1890 the Court supported electrocution as an acceptable way of execution in In re Kemmler. In Kemmler the Court defined the terms of cruel and unusual means of execution as: “Punishments are cruel when they involve torture or a lingering death; but the punishment of death is not cruel, within the meaning of that word as used in the Constitution. It implies there is something inhuman and barbarous, something more than the mere extinguishing of