Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution
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Amendment VIII (the Eighth Amendment) of the United States Constitution, which is part of the U.S. Bill of Rights, prohibits excessive bail or fines, as well as cruel and unusual punishment. The phrases employed are taken from the English Bill of Rights.
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[edit] Text
| Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. |
[edit] Excessive bail
In England, sheriffs originally determined whether or not to grant bail to criminal suspects. Since they tended to abuse their power, Parliament passed a statute in 1275 whereby bailable and non-bailable offenses were defined. The King's judges often subverted the provisions of the law. It was held that an individual may be held without bail upon the Sovereign's command. Eventually, the Petition of Right of 1628 argued that the King did not have such authority. Later, technicalities in the law were exploited to keep the accused imprisoned without bail even where the offenses were bailable; such loopholes were for the most part closed by the Habeas Corpus Act 1679. Thereafter, judges were compelled to set bail, but they often required impracticable amounts. Finally, the English Bill of Rights (1689) held that "excessive bail ought not to be required." Nevertheless, the Bill did not abolish the distinction between bailable and non-bailable offenses. Thus, the Eighth Amendment has been interpreted to mean that bail may be denied where the charges are sufficiently serious. The Supreme Court has also permitted "preventive" detention without bail. In United States v. Salerno (1987), the Supreme Court held that the only limitation imposed by the bail clause is that "the government's proposed conditions of release or detention not be 'excessive' in light of the perceived evil."
[edit] Excessive fines
The protection against excessive fines applies only with respect to the government. Punitive damages awarded in civil trials are not governed by the clause, as the Supreme Court held in Browning-Ferris Industries v. Kelco Disposal, Inc. (1989). The Supreme Court has held that the wealth of the defendant need not be considered when deciding the excessiveness of a fine; neither has the Court ever explicitly set a maximum figure for fines.
[edit] Cruel and unusual punishments
The use of the word and (instead of or) has been held to have some significance. Cruel punishments are allowable as long as more than one court system applies the punishment. Similarly, unusual punishments are permitted so long as they are not cruel, although some lawyers would argue that any unusual punishment is cruel. Thus, for example, three strikes laws have been upheld by the Court as not conflicting with this clause, because even if they are unusual, they are not cruel (in the sense that there is no physical torture).
The Eighth Amendment forbids some punishments entirely, and forbids some punishments that are excessive when compared to the crime.
In Furman v. Georgia (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."
- "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."
- "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."
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.
[edit] Punishments entirely forbidden
In Wilkerson v. Utah (1878, pertaining to methods of capital punishment), the Supreme Court commented that drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive and disemboweling would constitute cruel and unusual punishment while determining that death by firing squad was as legitimate as the common method of that time, hanging.
Torture is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
The Court held in the case Trop v. Dulles (1958) that punishing a natural born citizen for a crime by taking away his citizenship is unconstitutionally excessive, being "more primitive than torture" because it involved the "total destruction of the individual's status in organized society".
In Robinson v. California (1962), the Court decided, 6-2, that a California law authorizing a 90-day jail sentence for "be[ing] addicted to the use of narcotics" violated the Eighth Amendment, as narcotics addiction "is apparently an illness", and California was attempting to punish people based on the state of this illness, rather than for any specific act.
[edit] Punishments forbidden when excessive
Weems v. United States (1910) held that a punishment is cruel and unusual if it is excessive. (The Weems case dealt with a sentence that mandated "hard and painful labor", shackling for the duration of incarceration, and permanent civil disabilities.)
In Coker v. Georgia (1977), the Court declared that the death penalty was unconstitutionally excessive for rape of an adult female and, by implication, for any crime other than murder. However, some states are challenging this rule[1] by enacting a death penalty statute for repeat child molesters.
Traditionally, the length of a prison sentence was not subject to scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment, regardless of the crime for which the sentence was imposed. It was not until the case of Solem v. Helm (1983) that the Supreme Court held that incarceration, standing alone, could constitute cruel and unusual punishment if it were "disproportionate" in duration with respect to the offense. The Court outlined three factors that were to be considered in determining if the sentence is excessive: "(i) the gravity of the offense and the harshness of the penalty; (ii) the sentences imposed on other criminals in the same jurisdiction; and (iii) the sentences imposed for commission of the same crime in other jurisdictions." The Court held that in the circumstances of the case before it and the factors to be considered, a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for cashing a $100 check on a closed account was cruel and unusual.
[edit] Capital Punishment
Aside from the period 1967 to 1976, when the death penalty was effectively suspended, the Supreme Court's consistent ruling has been that capital punishment itself is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment, but that many applications have been. The Court declared the execution of the mentally retarded to be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual in Atkins v. Virginia (2002), and in Roper v. Simmons (2005) it declared the death penalty unconstitutionally cruel and unusual for people who were under age 18 at the time of their crime.
The constitutionality of capital punishment itself is often challenged, usually on the grounds that it allegedly violates the Eighth Amendment. In Wilkerson v. Utah, the Supreme Court stated that death by firing squad was not cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The first significant challenge to reach the Court was Furman v. Georgia (1972), when the Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of Furman as well as two defendants in separate cases against Georgia and Texas, in a 5-4 decision. Of the five justices voting to overturn the death penalty cases, two found capital punishment itself to be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual; and three found that the death penalty was meted out in a random and capricious fashion, discriminating against blacks and the poor. This, they said, made the application of the death penalty cruel and unusual.
States with capital punishment rewrote the laws to address the Supreme Court's findings, and in Gregg v. Georgia (1976), the Court found, in a 7-2 ruling, that Georgia's new death penalty laws passed Eighth Amendment scrutiny: a bifurcated trial in which guilt and sentence were determined separately; and "there must be specific jury findings as to the circumstances of the crime or the character of the defendant, and the State Supreme Court thereafter reviews the comparability of each death sentence with the sentences imposed on similarly situated defendants to ensure that the sentence of death in a particular case is not disproportionate". Executions resumed in 1977.
Some states have passed laws imposing mandatory death penalties in certain cases; the Supreme Court has found these laws to be unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment. Other statutes specifying factors for courts to use in making their decisions have been upheld. Some have not: in Godfrey v. Georgia (1980), the Supreme Court overturned a sentence based upon a finding that a murder was "outrageously or wantonly vile, horrible, and inhuman," as it deemed that any murder may be reasonably characterized in this manner. Similarly, in Maynard v. Cartwright (1988), the Court found that an "especially heinous, atrocious or cruel" standard was too vague. However, the vagueness of this language depends on how lower courts interpret it. In Walton v. Arizona, , the Court found that the phrase "especially heinous, cruel, or depraved" was not vague because the state supreme court had expounded on its meaning.
Nevertheless, under the proportionality principle embodied in the Eighth Amendment, the Court has found that the death penalty may not be imposed for the crime of rape of an adult woman,[2] for felony murder where the defendant was a minor participant in the crime,[3] and on mentally retarded[4] and juvenile offenders.[5]
[edit] Punishments Allowed
In Rummel v. Estelle, , the Court upheld a life sentence with the possibility of parole for fraud crimes totaling $230.
In Harmelin v. Michigan, , the Court upheld a life sentence without the possibility of parole for possession of 650 grams of cocaine.
In Lockyer v. Andrade, , the Court upheld a sentence imposed under California's three-strikes law when the defendant was convicted of shoplifting videotapes worth a total of $150.
[edit] See also
- Capital punishment in the United States
- Cruel and unusual punishment
- Crime against humanity
- Human rights violation
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Dallas Morning News article
- ^ Coker v. Georgia
- ^ Felony Murder and the Death Penalty
- ^ Atkins v. Virginia
- ^ Roper v. Simmons
[edit] External links
- Kilman, Johnny and George Costello (Eds). (2000). The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation.
- CRS Annotated Constitution: 8th Amendment
