While I see that as a valid issue in it's own right... I don't see the connection here, sorry.
Cruel and unusual punishment applies regardless of actual or claimed innocence, they could have totally done the crime and the punishment could still be unconstitutional.
This is not a catch-22 side effect of inflexible poorly written law, but an intentional side-stepping of built-in protections against abuse of power.
I personally thought it was an obvious point of logic.
The ban in the 8th amendment is on "cruel and unusual punishments". Therefore punishments that are cruel or unusual, but not both, are not banned.
For example it would be hard to argue that excessive prison time is at all unusual in this country. So no matter how cruel it may be, it passes muster. Conversely Shena Hardin was given the unusual punishment of having to stand on a particular sidewalk wearing a sign that said, "Only an idiot would drive on the sidewalk to avoid a school bus." (She was, in fact, said idiot.) The punishment was unusual, but not cruel. It therefore passed constitutional muster.
However being kept in an overly crowded prison without appropriate medical care qualifies as both cruel and unusual punishment and is therefore unconstitutional. (As a variety of courts have had to repeatedly point out to California. Personally I'd love to see the fraction of the prison population that is over the design capacity of prisons in California become the portion of the year that key officials should have to spend inside of said prisons. I'm sure that we'd see Jerry Brown stop dragging his feet on the issue fairly promptly...)
I think there is a very rationale case to be made that imprisonment for the sake of punishment is unproductive and immoral - but I can't see any way that it falls under unconstitutional.
So the only reason mandatory minimums are not unconstitutional is because of the word 'and'? I guess you can then make any cruel punishment constitutional by making it usual.
Cruel or unusual punishment is a standard that only applies to convicted prisoners, and not those in county jails, which come under due process.
Generally though, yes, you are right it becomes a constitutional violation, rather than a statutory violation if you don't feed the prisoners. Often though the statues give rights above and beyond the constitution. For instance, in Illinois it requires jails to give prisoners 1800 calories a day. But it is not enforceable. So they can give a lot less as long as they don't kill you. And IIRC the statute also demands "The menu shall be diversified so as to avoid the monotony of a standardized diet." which again is not enforceable. So they can basically just feed you Nutriloaf once a day and call it job done.
It's funny because the first line includes a bug in it. It says a minimum of "1800 to 2000 calories." Well, which is it?
(also, just a thought, but there are generally no punishments for violating a person's constitutional rights -- you can sue for your injuries, but prisoners specifically are severely restricted by Congress on bringing suits against their captors because there were too many, and those suits can only allege physical harm, not any kind of mental
or emotional suffering)
Cruel and unusual is a thing that gets interpreted and re interpreted. The 1A is pretty unambiguous. I believe they enjoy a subset of 1A rights, though not all as felons lose some rights.
The 8th Amendment is based on Cesare Beccaria's On Crimes And Punishments and the term "cruel and unusual" specifically means the punishment should be proportionate to the crime.
It's a laughably ludicrous violation of the Fourth Amendment. I can only assume that its constitutionality is not challenged in court or is challenged and not upheld.
It's unjust, but many of the victims are actual criminals and so nothing is done.
The US Constitution only prohibits the government from inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. It says nothing about preventing a privately owned and operated company from doing so.
>We consider whether the eighth Ammendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment bars a city from prosecuting people criminally for sleeping outside on public property when those people have no home or other shelter to go to. We conclude that it does.
Still, it seems unrelated to cruel and unusual punishment. Putting people in jail is standard punishment for many crimes. It seems like the problem is in the prosecution itself before any sort of punishment is decided.
No. An absolute liability offense is unconstitutional if the maximum penalty is incarceration; this can't be dodged by simply not asking for that penalty to be applied.
This is an incredible reply to what I now think is an embarrassing oversimplification of the issue. Thanks for taking the time to explain the nuances of this - so it's not necessarily an absurd twisting of the law to scold/punish an individual, but a well-meaning (perhaps flawed?) interpretation to protect the integrity of the constitution. I had no idea it was so complex.
According to the US Ninth Circuit, 42 U.S.C. §1983, and the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution, prohibiting the imposition of excessive fines, or cruel and unusual punishment, on the basis that homeless people have no choice in the matter of their homelessness.
reply