Cruel and unusual punishment

eighth amendment states, “excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. The defense using the section of the 8th amendment that pertained to “cruel and unusual punishments”, it was…

The enlightenment was a European intellectual movement of the late 17th and 18th centuries emphasizing reason and the progress of individuals. The five main concepts of the Enlightenment were reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty. The Enlightenment was mostly led by the philosophers of Europe including Cesare Beccaria, John Locke, Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Hobbes. Another one of these philosophers was Francois Marie Arouet, otherwise known as Voltaire. Voltaire often used satire…

Can a juvenile offender be rehabilitated or do we lock them up and throw away the key? The Eighth Amendment to the Constitution directly addresses Cruel and Unusual punishment. The Supreme Court has decided that all non-homicide related crimes by juveniles are not eligible for a LWOP verdict. The argument is, “because juveniles are less culpable and more likely to be rehabilitated than adult offenders, the sentence…

The causes of this punishment are; fear of increased violence in incarcerated adolescents (pg.159), differentiation of social class (pg.155), and racial discrimination (pg.154). This sentence can cause the adolescents who receive it to lose their rights as an American citizen, as outlined in the Declaration of Independence. A social policy that would help the circumstances of this punishment would be for the United States bans juvenile life imprisonment…

court under any circumstances. In this essay, three things will be discussed; that kids brains are not developed enough to make complex decisions, that courts have no scientific or logical reason to try a minor in adult court, and that it is cruel and unusual to punish kids and adult the same way. Firstly, children’s brains are too underdeveloped to make complex decisions. Rachel Tompa in her article titled: “MRI studies of teenage brain …” explains, “Specifically, a teen's prefrontal cortex –…

In the article Death Penalty for Teens, Frank W. Heft JR thinks that the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment for teens. While David Smith thinks that the death penalty for teens is not cruel and unusual punishment, they both have different views points about this matter and they do not agree. Heft and Smith disagree on juvenile capital punishment in three different areas, physical maturity which includes age, state law versus federal law, and emotional maturity that refers to the…

The death penalty dates back to as far as 1750 B.C. It was a common thing back then to use physical punishment when someone committed a crime or did wrong to another family. The biblical saying, “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” was seen as a literal punishment. During the Roman times, the lower class would often be stripped of all their worldly possessions, including their families, and be forced to a life of servitude. They may not have been put to death, but they lost everything that…

limits the rights found in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments. Civil forfeiture laws limit the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The death penalty also limits the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment along with the right to equal protection under the law. All of these limits mean that individual liberties are not protected as they should be and that the government’s power is being…

According to a recent University of Michigan study, four percent of those sentenced to death are innocent (Gross, O’Brien, Hu & Kennedy, 2013). Though four percent may seem small in comparison to the number of legally guilty criminals who receive the punishment, as a 2014 Forbes article points out, “very few false convictions are discovered in the justice system” (Lopatto, 2014). Further, that four percent of individuals are still living human beings who deserve some sort of justice for the…

I believe this because Latimer’s arguments that it was a defence of necessity and that his sentencing was a form of cruel and unusual punishment were invalid due to the fact that Latimer intentionally took Tracy’s life. Trial Judge Wimmer J. found that Mr. Latimer’s Charter rights had not been violated (Supreme Court Judgments, 2016). This is significant because it was Latimer…