cruel and unusuial punishment
Cruel And Unusual? Cruel and Unusual? The Eight Amendment of the United States says, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” The anti-federalists who wrote this amendment did not have the death penalty in mind. Executing and individual for a crime committed was a widely excepted practice. But now, over 200 years later most of the western world has abolished the death penalty—the United States has not. In 1972, when the United States Supreme Court struck down the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia [408 U.S. 238]1, the court ruled that the nation's death penalty, in its current form, violated the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.. But with the Gregg v. Georgia [428 U.S. 153] 1 decision in 1976, the Court reopened the path for executions, accepting new death penalty laws that supposedly eliminated arbitrariness, racial bias and class discrimination.