Courts have used all of the following in assessing whether punishment is cruel and unusual, except:

Justia Opinion Summary and Annotations

Annotation

Primary Holding

The death penalty could be revived in Georgia, Florida, and Texas because the new law provided sufficient clarity and objectivity in defining which defendants could be eligible for capital punishment and gave juries sufficient discretion in choosing whether to apply it.

In 1972, the Supreme Court had ruled that the imposition of the death penalty under current systems of capital punishment violated the Eighth Amendment because of its arbitrary, unevenly imposed nature. This decision in Furman v. Georgia resulted in a moratorium on the death penalty while states that sought to retain capital punishment revised their systems for imposing it. Georgia, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, and Louisiana were five of the 35 states that amended their death penalty laws to comply with Furman.

In each of these states, a defendant who was sentenced to death under the new laws appealed the penalty on the grounds that capital punishment was categorically unconstititutional under the Eighth Amendment because it was cruel and unusual per se. The five cases were consolidated and heard together to determine whether the new death penalty systems in the five states were rational. Neither side was able to present conclusive evidence that the death penalty either deterred crime or failed to deter it. Still, the convicted defendants argued that it ran counter to human dignity, diverged from the current social consensus on the issue, and was disproportionate to the crimes committed.

Issue: Whether the death penalty was unconstitutional per se under the Eighth Amendment as cruel and unusual punishment.
Holding: No. Trends in both the political process and the judgments of juries suggest that there is still a social consensus in favor of retaining the death penalty. There is no conclusive evidence that it fails in its objective of deterring crime, and it does not offend human dignity because some crimes are so severe that the only appropriate response is capital punishment. Moreover, the death penalty is not disproportionate to the crime of murder

Plurality

• Potter Stewart (Author)
• Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr.
• John Paul Stevens

Following the guidelines stated in Furman, the majority analyzed whether each state had instituted a sufficiently objective process for determining whether an individual was eligible for the death penalty. It also considered whether each state gave judges and jurors sufficient discretion in determining whether the death penalty was appropriate in a certain situation, having evaluated mitigating and aggravating factors. (The Justices did not feel that a jury was necessary in all sentencing determinations and suggested that a judge might provide greater consistency.) The majority also noted that appellate review of any death sentence was essential and that this review must consist of a genuine evaluation of whether proper procedures were followed and the sentence was objectively rational. In fact, appeals in all states are mandatory and cannot even be waived.

Without going into the details of each state's scheme here, the majority approved the systems in states that limited the criteria that could make an individual eligible for capital punishment while giving broad discretion to sentencers (judge or jury) regarding whether it should be imposed on a certain defendant. These states were Georgia, Florida, and Texas. By contrast, North Carolina and Louisiana provided a relatively vague list of factors that could make an individual eligible for the death penalty and limited the abiility of decision-makers to refrain from imposing it in a certain instance. The majority also held, based on historical evidence, that a mandatory death penalty is unconstitutional per se.

Concurrence

• William Hubbs Rehnquist (Author)

Rehnquist felt that all five states met the guidelines under Furman and was not convinced that mandatory death penalties that removed discretion from judges and juries were per se unconstitutional. He argued that some arbitrariness was inevitable when juries impose the death penalty because there is no uniform system to compare their verdicts, and he did not feel that capital punishment merited any additional procedures beyond other criminal sentences.

Concurrence

• Byron Raymond White (Author)
• Warren Earl Burger
• William Hubbs Rehnquist

Although he did not see the need to bifurcate death penalty cases into guilt and sentencing phases, White largely echoed the majority's view that capital punishment is not unconstitutional, based on legislative initiatives keeping it in place. He also noted that substantial judicial precedents and references to the death penalty in the Constitution suggested that it should not be categorically struck down. White recommended that most issues concerning the uniformity of its imposition should be left to legislatures to resolve.

Concurrence

• Harry Andrew Blackmun (Author)

Dissent

• William Joseph Brennan, Jr. (Author)

Brennan would have struck down the death penalty per se, believing that it fails in its objective of deterring crime and does not serve a retributive purpose that is appropriate in current American society.

Dissent

• Thurgood Marshall (Author)

Agreeing with Brennan that the death penalty was unconstitutional, Marshall would follow his lead in voting against it in every capital punishment case that the Court would consider during his time on the bench.

Mandatory death penalty statutes remain unconstitutional per se, but courts otherwise have wavered in how much discretion a jury should have during the sentencing phase of a capital trial. Often known as the July 2 cases, this group of decisions served as the origin of modern jurisprudence on capital punishment. Its application has been steadily restricted even further with time, including in cases involving mentally deficient defendants, children, and people convicted of crimes other than murder. The Court also has made every effort to ensure that mitigating factors are considered as broadly and aggravating factors as narrowly as possible.

Following the rulings in Gregg and the related cases, capital punishment resumed in 1977 in Utah. No nationwide moratorium similar to Furman has been placed on it since then.

Disclaimer: Official Supreme Court case law is only found in the print version of the United States Reports. Justia case law is provided for general informational purposes only, and may not reflect current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. We make no warranties or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness, or adequacy of the information contained on this site or information linked to from this site. Please check official sources.

Justia Annotations is a forum for attorneys to summarize, comment on, and analyze case law published on our site. Justia makes no guarantees or warranties that the annotations are accurate or reflect the current state of law, and no annotation is intended to be, nor should it be construed as, legal advice. Contacting Justia or any attorney through this site, via web form, email, or otherwise, does not create an attorney-client relationship.

Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase mentioned in the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Specifically, the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Constitution does not give more guidance than that, and so courts--and particularly the Supreme Court--have heard a number of cases which have given guidance to the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

Imprisonment

Proportionality of Sentence

In Solem v. Helm, 463 U.S. 277 (1983), the Supreme Court held that a sentence may not be disproportionate to the crime committed, regardless of whether the crime is a felony or a misdemeanor. To measure proportionality, the court must look at several factors. These factors include: 

• The severity of the offense
• The harshness of the penalty
• The sentences imposed on others within the same jurisdiction
• The sentences imposed on others in different jurisdictions.

The Supreme Court later overturned this prohibition on disproportionate sentences in Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957 (1991), but stated, in dicta, that in extreme cases, a disproportionate sentence could violate the Eighth Amendment. This opinion was later affirmed in Lockyer v. Andrade, 538 U.S. 63 (2003), holding that a gross proportionality requirement is only available in “exceedingly rare” and “extreme cases.”

Age

Juvenile Non-Homicide Offenders

The Supreme Court does consider age when determining the constitutionality of imprisonment. In Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), the Supreme Court held that, for juvenile non-homicide offenders, it is unconstitutional for a court to assign life imprisonment without parole. Further, if a court does impose a life sentence, it must also provide the offender with a "realistic opportunity to obtain release."

Juvenile Homicide Offenders

In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), the Court expanded on Graham, holding that life imprisonment without parole is unconstitutional for juvenile homicide offenders.

Prison Beatings

In Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651 (1977), the Supreme Court stated that the “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. This standard was refined in Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312 (1986), in which the Supreme Court stated that action that may seem like an unconstitutional “unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain” may be constitutional, if the infliction of pain is done in a good-faith effort to restore discipline, rather than done maliciously to cause harm.

Using this standard, the Supreme Court found that a prisoner’s Eighth Amendment right was violated in Hope v. Pelzer, 536 U.S. 730 (2002). The prisoner was handcuffed to a hitching post for 7 hours, taunted, and denied bathroom breaks. The court reasoned that this treatment exceeded what was necessary to restore order.

In Hudson v McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992), the Supreme Court held that a prisoner does not need to experience significant injury by prison guards in order to suffer an Eighth Amendment violation. Rather, if the guards act maliciously and sadistically to punish the prisoner, then that punishment would be cruel and unusual, and would accordingly violate the Eighth Amendment.

Conditions of Confinement

Deliberate Indifference

In Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976), the Supreme Court established that the Eighth Amendment may be violated due to factors related to a prisoner's confinement. A prison guard's deliberate indifference to a prisoner's serious illness or injury would constitute cruel and unusual punishment which would violate the Eighth Amendment.

Overcrowding

In Brown v. Plata, 131 S.Ct. 1910 (2011), the Court held that prison overcrowding in California was unconstitutional because the living conditions resulted in medical care violations. The Court reasoned that prisoners would suffer and could die if they did not receive adequate medical care.

[Last updated in July of 2022 by the Wex Definitions Team]