Death Penalty. Recent Supreme Court rulings

The Eighth amendment is a fundamental part of the United States Constitution just like the 2nd amendments right to bear arms. The amendment was taken up by the State of Virginia first when it adopted it from England from their Bill of Rights dating back to 1689. Virginia Declaration of Rights of 1776 The provision was largely inspired by the case in England of Titus Oates who, after the ascension of James 1 in 1685, was tried for multiple acts of perjury which had caused many executions of people he had wrongly accused. He was sentenced to imprisonment which included an annual ordeal of being taken out for two days pillory plus one day of whipping while tied to a moving cart. The Oates case eventually became a topic of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.

In England, the "cruel and unusual punishments" clause was a limitation on the discretion of judges, and required judges to adhere to precedent. According to the great treatise of the 1760s by William Blackstone

Recently retired William Joseph Brennan Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States noted the following in:Furman v Georgia

In Furman " Justice Brennan concluded that because death is a penalty inflicted on the poor and hapless defendant but not the affluent and socially better defendant, it violates the implicit requirement of equality of treatment found within the Eighth Amendment. " eighth amendment as it relates to the imposition of the death penalty

The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture. "A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion." "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society." "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."

Continuing, he wrote that he expected that no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a "cumulative" analysis of the implication of each of the four principles

The first significant general challenge to capital punishment that reached the Supreme Court was the case of Furman v. Georgia , 408 U.S. 238 (1972). In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of Furman for murder, as well as two other defendants for rape. Of the five justices voting to overturn the death penalty, two found capital punishment to be unconstitutionally cruel and unusual, while three found that the statutes at issue were implemented in a random and capricious fashion, discriminating against blacks and the poor. Furman v. Georgia did not hold — even though it is sometimes claimed that it did — that capital punishment is per se unconstitutional

. In Robinson v. California , 370 U.S. 660 (1962)

Justice Potter Stewart's opinion for the Robinson Court held that "infliction of cruel and unusual punishment [is] in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments." The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, such as John Bingham, had discussed this subject:

"Many instances of State injustice and oppression have already occurred in the State legislation of this Union, of flagrant violations of the guarantied privileges of citizens of the United States, for which the national Government furnished and could furnish by law no remedy whatever. Contrary to the express letter of your Constitution, "cruel and unusual punishments" have been inflicted under State laws within this Union upon citizens, not only for crimes committed, but for sacred duty done, for which and against which the Government of the United States had provided no remedy and could provide none. "

 In recent months a challenge to the death penalty has gone to the Supreme Court of the United States claiming the the Death Penalty administered by lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.  After many cases witnessed where it has taken more than 20 minutes for the person to die and or multiple applications of intravenous drugs went horribly wrong.  apparently the drugs are administered with no proper training often by Prison guard who have no or little training in the proper is there is such a thing in painlessly killing a person