Cruel+and+Unusual+Punishment

Over the years, evidence suggests that the death penalty was and continues to be a cruel and unusual punishment. As demonstrated by the Death Penalty Information Center in the 1700's most people were put to death for false witness, witchcraft, and theft. The typical methods of execution were the guillotine (device used to decapitate) or hanging (“ Part I: History of the Death Penalty”). It is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those other barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society ( Bedau).  Today, thirty-eight states use the death penalty. Twelve others do not permit it. While the majority of Americans favor the death penalty, significant controversy continues over the practice (“ Death Penalty”) . Those that favor it argue that prisons are overpopulated, incarceration is expensive and that a serious criminal deserves the worst punishment- death. The other side argues that we need to abolish the death penalty because it is a cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution ( Messerli). In the Constitution, the Eighth Amendment reads: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted (Mount ).”  Death penalty opponents argue that even prisoners have these rights, and that execution violates the Amendment ( Green). Therefore the death penalty is both inhumane and unconstitutional.

Over the decades, American scientists and inventors have created what they thought were better, faster, and cleaner methods of execution, but none have proven either completely effective or humane. Firstly hanging, which was predominant in and before 19th century, establishes almost torture-like punishment (“Methods of Execution) . As recorded on CNN, a common example of this method is Saddam Hussein, hung in 2006 where many video cameras captured his death (Hussein Executed <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">). <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> According to Sofpedia News, in judicial hangings, the convicted is dropped through a trap door, as the rope turns rigid and the noose’s force breaks the victim’s neck. This also provokes significant damage to the spinal cord and when the fall is longer than the prescribed distance, the victim can be decapitated. Sometimes, intense fear can cause a cardiac arrest to the convicted. Harold Hillman, an expert in executions and teacher at the University of Surrey, states, “Hanging is a very cruel way of killing people. The fracture obstructs their breathing, and they are left gasping for breath ( <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Anitei).” <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Subsequently the process of electrocution became dominant, when two employees of Thomas Edison developed the electric chair. Despite nearly universal adoption across the US, the electric chair was, and remains, inconsistent and potentially ineffective. It took eight minutes to kill the very first electrocuted prisoner, William Kemmler, who caught on fire. The smell of his burning flesh forced terrified onlookers from the execution (CCADP). After more than a century, things haven't improved. In the 1995 execution of Pedro Medina in Florida, "A crown of foot-high flames shot from the headpiece during the execution, filling the execution chamber with a stench of thick smoke and gagging the two dozen official witnesses." Florida then built a new electric chair, which also botched an execution two years later (Radelet). There have been several accounts as such of ineffective and cruel executions pertaining to the electric chair, where prisoners are very often burnt alive. Today, while electrocution, the gas chamber, hanging and even firing squad are still permitted, all states have lethal injection as their primary method of execution <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> (“Methods of Execution”) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">. However, according to Amnesty International, lethal injection, introduced in the US in 1982, also has a great track record of cruel and unusual punishment and is deeply flawed (“Lethal Injection”). For example in the 2000 case of Bennie Demps, it took execution technicians 33 minutes to find suitable veins for the execution. In his final statement, Demps said, “They butchered me back there. I was in a lot of pain. They cut me in the groin; they cut me in the leg. I was bleeding profusely. This is not an execution, it is murder ( <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Radelet).” <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> Furthermore in the 2006 execution of Angel Diaz, also held in Florida, it took 34 minutes for Angel to slowly die after executioners injected the lethal chemicals into soft tissue instead of his bloodstream. On lookers such as Jonathon Groner, associate professor of surgery at the Ohio State Medical School stated, “It really sounded like he was tortured to death; my impression is that it [lethal injection] would cause an extreme amount of pain (“Doctors: Botched Execution Likely Painful”).” The three most common methods of capital punishment practiced today – electrocution, hanging, and lethal injection – are all cruel in the many botched executions and unusual in the barbaric nature it brings to the traditional and civilized society our community strives to upkeep.

<span style="font: 12pt/150% Palatino Linotype; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0ex; text-transform: none; word-spacing: normal;">The first US electrocution, of William Kemmler ("//First US Electrocution"//)

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Capital punishment takes a psychological as well as physical toll on the prisoner. According to The Death Penalty Information Center, once sentenced to death, death row inmates in the U.S. typically spend over a decade awaiting their execution while spending 23 hours a day in solitary confinement (TIME ON DEATH ROW). Behind bars, death row inmates suffer from helplessness and mental deterioration due to the isolation and agony in waiting while others decide when they die. Stuart Grassian, a psychiatrist and former professor at the Harvard Medical School of Psychiatry, demonstrates that there is a distinct syndrome associated with the solitary confinement that these inmates face leading to psychotic, violent, and self-destructive behavior (Grassian <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">). <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Doctor Karen Harrison, who specializes in the field of criminal law, expands on Grassian's point, defining Death Row Phenomenon as, "the harmful effects on death row conditions, including exposure to extended periods of solitary confinement and the mental anxiety that prisoners experience whilst waiting for their death." She also defines Death Row Syndrome as, "the consequential psychological illness that can occur as a result of death row phenomenon (Harrison).” Therefore this syndrome raises the question of whether these criminals are facing one punishment or two considering the death sentence itself and the years of living in solitary confinement - a severe and damaging punishment by itself. According to the Supreme Court of California, in the case of People versus Anderson, "the cruelty of capital punishment lies not only in the execution itself…but also in the dehumanizing effects of the lengthy imprisonment prior to execution (“U.S. Supreme Court”).” Furthermore it is noted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the In Re Kemmler case of the electric chair, punishments are cruel in nature “when they involve torture or lingering death (IN RE KEMMLER <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">).” <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> This is profoundly relevant to the inmates of Death Row as their internal (mental) and external (confinement) torture becomes a matter of concern and their deaths linger over decades with a mental health status that is intensely declining.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The execution in and of itself is also cruel and unusual, especially when determining the morality and reasoning of the punishment. The US government, which claims to cherish human rights, is the only Western nation sill using the death penalty (“IHM: The Issue of the Death Penalty”). Everyone should be entitled to his or her own life. Hence, we must ask ourselves: Isn’t it hypocritical of our government to kill people in order to demonstrate that killing is wrong? Does anyone have the right to take away a life, even if it serves as punishment? No; it doesn’t correspond with the human rights everyone deserves, and therefore capital punishment is cruel and unusual in a society that strives for fairness, compassion, and equality. The first line of the Constitution is: "We the People…" it is not "The government of the United States…(“The United States Constitution”).” Furthermore, in a democratic system like the United States, the state derives whatever rights it possesses solely from the collective rights of the individuals who compose the state (Benn). The criminal justice system expresses the collective rights of all citizens. Therefore, if citizens lack the right or moral imperative to do something, so should the state, since the state serves as a proxy for the collective rights of all individuals (Carnell). <span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is both hypocritical and cruel of our government to kill someone for killing someone.

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 12pt;">And how reliable are the evidence and systems that on serve as the foundation for our justice system? Recent years have shown an increasing number of cases where new evidence has declared the once-guilty as innocent. However, the death penalty cannot be undone. What is the state to do when new evidence comes up but the accused has already been executed? A common example is the case of Juan Melendez, where a long-forgotten taped confession by the actual killer was discovered sixteen years after Juan had been sentenced to death (Berkowitz). Also, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, attorneys tried frantically to show the governor of Texas a new scientific report proving his innocence. The evidence was apparently ignored, and Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004 (Scheck). According to Amnesty International, since 1973, over 130 people have been released from death rows throughout the country due to evidence of their wrongful convictions. In 2003 alone, 10 wrongfully convicted defendants were released from death row. A certain amount of corruption lies within the criminal justice system itself due to inadequate legal representation, police misconduct, mistaken eyewitnesses, racial prejudices, suppression of evidence, or the political pressure to solve a case (“Death Penalty Facts”) So the questions remain – can a system, that is more flawed than not, determine whether someone lives or not? Isn't the potential of killing an innocent life too great a risk? It is cruel to kill both the innocent and the guilty. Execution is irreversible.

<span style="font-family: 'Palatino Linotype',serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;">In conclusion, almost every aspect of the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The process that leads to the sentencing of death can be corrupt, flawed or accidental. The torturous waiting process slowly eating at an inmate's mind is something that the justice system clearly has not accounted for. The execution itself can often constitute cruel and unusual punishment, as it does not represent a sure-fire, painless death. And lastly the moral reasoning of the punishment as a whole is both hypocritical and cruel. Therefore, the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

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<span style="font: 12pt/150% Palatino Linotype; letter-spacing: normal; text-decoration: none; text-indent: 0ex; text-transform: none; word-spacing: normal;"> An anti-capital punishment commercial showing the details of a convicted innocent man. ("//Death Penalty - Mistake//")