Podcast Cruel And Unusual Analysis

The podcast Cruel and Unusual covers the issue of the death penalty and whether or not it should be allowed in the U.S. It discusses the controversy within this issue, especially the lethal injection and the constitutionality of capital punishment in regards to the ban of cruel and unusual punishment in the 8th amendment. Some of the cases mentioned were Wilkerson v Utah where the Supreme Court initially ruled to allow a firing squad to be used in the death penalty and Baze v Rees (2008) in which the Supreme Court ruled that lethal injection was not cruel and unusual punishment, and therefore not unconstitutional. The impact that the issue of the death penalty and the court cases regarding it have on the country is that people are easily outraged