THE CRUEL and UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS CLAUSE in the 21ST CENTURY ] Ohn D

University of Baltimore Law ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law All Faculty Scholarship Faculty Scholarship 2013 The Anomaly of Executions: The rC uel and Unusual Punishments Clause in the 21st Century John Bessler University of Baltimore School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.law.ubalt.edu/all_fac Part of the Constitutional Law Commons, Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation The Anomaly of Executions: The rC uel and Unusual Punishments Clause in the 21st Century, 2 Brit. J. Am. Legal Stud. 297 (2013). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Faculty Scholarship by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@University of Baltimore School of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ANOMALY OF EXECUTIONS: THE CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS CLAUSE IN THE 21ST CENTURY ] ohn D. Bessler* University of Baltimore School of Law ABSTRACT This Article describes the anomaly of executions in the context of the U.S. Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. While the Supreme Court routinely reads the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause to pro tect prisoners from harm, the Court simultaneously interprets the Eighth Amendment to allow inmates to be executed. Corporal punishments short of death have long been abandoned in America's penal system, yet execu tions-at least in a few locales, heavily concentrated in the South-persist. This Article, which seeks a principled and much more consistent interpreta tion of the Eighth Amendment, argues that executions should be declared unconstitutional as "cruel and unusual punishments." In so doing, the Ar ticle explores the history of the "cruel and unusual" catchphrase in English and American law and critiques the Supreme Court's "evolving standards of decency" test. The Article also describes the abandonment of corporal punishments as penal sanctions and discusses existing Eighth Amendment jurisprudence on that topic. The Article explains how executions are cru el-and were thought to be so even by some of America's founders-and have, over time, become unusual. The Article further highlights how the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment fundamentally transformed the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause calculus, making modern-day exe cutions unusual in the extreme because of the arbitrary and discriminatory way in which they are carried out. CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ............................................................ 299 II. "CRUEL AND UNUSUAL": A SHORT HISTORY ................... 312 A. The Origins of the Phrase .............................................. 312 B. Blackstone's Commentaries ............................................. 317 Associate Professor, University of Baltimore School of Law; Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center. 297 2 Br. ]. Am. Leg. Studies (2013) C. The Eighth Amendment and Its Equivalents ...................... 327 D. "Cruel" and "Unusual" Homicides and Beatings ................ 338 E. Early American Cases .......................................................... 345 i. An Overview: 1791 to 1830 ............................................. 345 ii. Early Jurists on Cruelty and Race ..................................... 349 iii. The Supreme Court's Pre-1900 Cases ................................ 366 III. THE STATE OF THE NATION ........................................... 381 A. The American Death Penalty ............................................... 381 B. The Supreme Court's Jurisprudence ..................................... 387 i. A "Progressive" Approach ............................................... 387 ii. The "Evolving Standards of Decency" Test ......................... 393 iii. Existing Eighth Amendment Case Law .............................. 397 iv. Excessive and Disproportionate Punishments ...................... 406 IV. THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN LAW .................. .415 A. The Fourteenth Amendment's Ratification ....................... .415 B. Due Process and Equal Protection .................................. .418 C. The Effect on What Is Considered "Cruel and Unusual" ..... 425 V. TOWARD A PRINCIPLED EIGHTH AMENDMENT ................ .428 A. The Punishment Continuum ............................................ 428 B. The Abandonment of Corporal Punishments ....................... 430 C. To Kill or Not to Kill? .................................................... 439 VI. Conclusion ......................................................................... 44 7 298 The Anomaly of Executions I. INTRODUCTION The Eighth Amendment, ratified in 1791/ contains just sixteen words: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."2 That amendment, however, has gen erated enormous controversy, spawning thousands of court cases3 and caustic reactions to U.S. Supreme Court decisions construing it.4 Courts have wrestled over the meaning of "excessive,"5 and jurists, lawyers, and scholars alike have spilled gallons of ink fiercely debating how to interpret the phrase "cruel and unusual punishments."6 There is relatively little legis lative history from the First Congress7 and the state ratification debates8 1 United States v. Austin, 614 F. Supp. 1208, 1212 (D. N.M. 1985) ("The eighth amendment ... was proposed in 1789 and ratified two years later in 1791."). 2 U.S. CONST., amend. VIII (ratified Dec. 15, 1791). 3 "ALLFEDS" and "ALLSTATES" Westlaw database searches for "Eighth Amendment" both yielded "10000 Documents"-the maximum retrievable number-as "Results." 4 In 2005, the Supreme Court held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit the execution of juvenile offenders. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005). In 2008, the Court also held that those provisions prohibit the death penalty for non-homicidal child rape. Kennedy v. Louisiana, 128 S. Ct. 2641 (2008). Both decisions generated heated and sustained public debate. 5 E.g., United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321, 335 (1998) ("Excessive means surpassing the usual, the proper, or a normal measure of proportion."); Alexander v. United States, 509 U.S. 544, 559 (1993) (commenting on "excessive" penalties within the meaning of the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause); United States ex rel. Milwaukee Soc. Democratic Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407, 435 (1921) (Brandeis, J., dissenting) ("It was assumed in Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas (No. 1), 212 U.S. 86, Ill ... that an excessive fine, even if definite, would violate the Eighth Amendment."). 6 E.g., Michael J. Zydney Mannheirner, Cruel and Unusual Federal Punishments, 98 IowAL. REv. 69 (2012); Kevin White, The Constitutional Limits ofthe "National Consensus" Doctrine in Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence, 2012 B.Y.U. L. REv. 1371 (2012); John F. Stinneford, Rethinking Proportionality Under the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, 97 VA. L. REv. 899 (2011); Aimee Logan, Who Says So? Defining Cruel and Unusual Punishment by Science, Sentiment, and Consensus, 35 HASTINGS CONST. L.Q. 195 (2008); Michael J. Zydney Mannheimer, When the Federal Death Penalty Is "Cruel and Unusual," 74 U. CIN. L. REv. 819 (2006); Susan M. Raeker-Jordan, Parsing Personal Predilections: A Fresh Look at the Supreme Court's Cruel and Unusual Death Penalty Jurisprudence, 58 ME. L. REv. 99 (2006); Douglas L. Simon, Making Sense of Cruel and Unusual Punishment: A New Approach to Reconciling Military and Civilian Eighth Amendment Law, 184 MIL. L. REv. 66 (2005); Shannon D. Gilreath, Cruel and Unusual Punishment and the Eighth Amendment as a Mandate for Human Dignity: Another Look at Original intent, 25 T. JEFFERSON L. REv. 559 (2003); Stephen T. Parr, Symmetric Proportionality: A New Perspective on the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause, 68 TENN. L. REv. 41 (2000). 7 JOHN D. BESSLER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: THE AMERICAN DEATH PENALTY AND THE FOUNDERS' EIGHTH AMENDMENT 186 (2012) (quoting the statements of Representatives William Loughton Smith and Samuel Livermore at the First Congress). 8 I d. at 186-87 (discussing the comments of Abraham Holmes at the Massachusetts convention and Patrick Henry's comments at Virginia's convention). 299 2 Br. ]. Am. Leg. Studies (2013) concerning the Eighth Amendment, further fueling the contentious public debate over the text.9 The Eighth Amendment-the subject of multiple books10 and count less law review articles11-has been described as "something of an enig ma.'m American judges rarely considered that amendment and state-law equivalents in the decades following the ratification of the U.S. Bill of Rights, so for generations the American people have wrestled mightily over the meaning of the bar on "cruel and unusual punishments.''13 Because what is "cruel and unusual" is largely a subjective determination, that long-standing debate is almost certain to continue.14 What is "cruel and 9 The death penalty itself has been a major focus of the Eighth Amendment debate. Compare John D. Bessler, Revisiting Beccaria's Vision: The Enlightenment, America's Death Penalty, and the Abolition Movement, 4 Nw. J. L. & Soc. POL'Y 195, 254 (2009) with RAOUL BERGER, DEATH PENALTIES: THE SUPREME COURT'S OBSTACLE COURSE (2001). 10 E.g., BESSLER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL, supra note 7; MICHAEL MELTSNER, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: THE SUPREME COURT AND CAPITAL PUNISHMENT (20 11) ( 1973 ); VINCENT

Load more