Violation of the Eighth Amendment

Abstract

Three-strikes and life sentences without chance of parole on juveniles may be excessive and amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment. Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contains the so-called points of cruel and unusual punishment. The proposal is a constitutional restriction on the types of sanctions that might be introduced in the United States. Since the founding of the country, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the three types of punishment may be cruel and unusual: the barbarous punishments which torture and mutilation, punishment as proportionate to the crime, and capital (death penalty) and non-capital cases record and the conditions in prisons and the practice of inhuman and degrading character. Like adults, children can present arguments as suspect, which is valid in the offense for which they are accused. When this law was initially conceived it was for violent offenders. It appears to be a complete violation of the eight amendments in the United States Constitution.

Violation of the Eighth Amendment

Introduction

The ban on cruel and unusual punishment in the Charter of the Rights of the English, and later in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was designed to make use of this barbarous and inhuman punishment to occur. The excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. For nearly a century after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, in 1791, it is not "cruel and unusual punishment" cases came to the U.S. Supreme Court as a result of a terrible punishment in accordance with English straight, with the exception of the store, were not used in the United States. During this period, the judge of all levels to interpret the proposal to prohibit certain methods of punishment, not by the proportionality between the offense and the proposals (Worrall, 2009). Basically, if a punishment was sanctioned by state law, it was not considered cruel and unusual.

Discussion

The death penalty was in use in all of the states at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified. Death by hanging, which has been a punishment since ancient times, was a form of execution used during the colonial period and has not been regarded as cruel and unusual. In its early decisions on the Eighth Amendment, the Supreme Court confronted new methods of administering the death penalty—firing squad and electrocution—and had to determine if these novel modes of execution were cruel and unusual. Death by shooting, the Court reasoned, did not fall into the same category of such barbarous punishments as disembowelment, beheadings, public dissections, and burning alive at the stake. Twelve years later, in the case In re Kemmler, 136 U.S. 436 (1890), a unanimous Supreme Court upheld the use of the electric chair. Death by electrocution was certainly unusual, but it was held not cruel. For a punishment to be “cruel,” it must entail something more than “the mere extinguishment of life” and involve “unnecessary mutilation of the body” (Macready, ...