Write An Essay On The 8th Amendment

The Eighth Amendment, which forbids unnecessary fines and bails as well as cruel and unusual punishment, was included in the Constitution because the British’s ways of punishment angered the Founding Fathers of the constitution and they wanted to be sure that the government’s power would not be abused and to prevent any future problems arising in areas of justice. The framers of the constitution, when writing the Eighth Amendment, took into consideration cases where severe punishments such as, branding, strangling or burning would be used. According to Exploring Constitutional Conflicts, “One clue to the expectations of the framers comes from the debates of the First Congress that proposed the Eighth Amendment. On the floor of the House, Representative Livermore complained about the vagueness of the amendment's language: "It is sometimes necessary to hang a man, villains often deserve a whipping, and perhaps having their ears cut off, but are we in the future to be prevented from inflicting those punishments because they are 'cruel'?” .
The Eighth Amendment was then written because a man, Titus Oates, lied and caused the deaths of many innocent people. As a result his punishment consisted of humiliation at the pillory for two days and a whipping while tied to a moving cart. …show more content…
Simmons himself called upon the Supreme Court himself because he felt that the initial death penalty was a violation of the Eighth Amendment. The Roper (acting prosecutor for the state of Missouri) vs. Simmons trial was decided on March 1st, 2005. As the final verdict the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of Simmons. The court had explained that the death sentence was cruel and unusual for a not yet adult. Also, as a result, the Supreme Court overturned the final decision that had been made in the Stanford vs. Kentucky case which was that sentencing minors to death was not unconstitutional. That judgment was no longer