In this day and age, most people take their freedom for granted. In the 21st century, lack of freedom of religion or permission of slavery is near unthinkable, and concerns many people every single say. A constitutional right that does not concern most people is prohibition of excessive fines and bail and cruel and unusual punishment. This is covered by the Eighth Amendment, which states that “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” This constitutional right only concerns those in court, facing fines due to crimes they committed, or those on the death row. For this reason, many people question why the Eighth Amendment was even established. When the Constitution was first preparing to be signed, many new American citizens were worried that under a new government, their natural rights wouldn’t be addressed. Hence, the Bill of Rights was written, and the Eighth Amendment was one of the first constitutional rights ratified. In 1791, when the Eighth Amendment was first adopted, people weren’t able to pay to get out of prison because the judges set the bail too high, and there were strange, diabolical punishments such as public floggings which were deemed cruel and unusual. For this reason, the Eighth Amendment was written.
The Eighth Amendment is a very important part of the Bill of Rights. It ensures that criminals being prosecuted will be punished fairly and in a way proportional to their crime: For example, if someone committed petty theft of a 5 dollar bag of chips, but was fined for a whopping 600 dollars, they could be protected by the Eighth Amendment. Most people interpret the Eighth Amendment as prohibiting punishment disproportionate to their crime, as well as punishments involving torture and intentional inflicting of pain. However, some high-standing court officials have interpreted this in different ways: they say that the standards of cruelty when the Eighth Amendment was adopted should be the standard of determining whether a punishment is cruel today. This challenges the Eighth Amendment, or at least challenges the current interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, because at the time, the standard of punishment was very low. People were flogged and beaten in public. They also said the clause only prohibits barbaric punishment, not disproportionate punishment and that it does not prohibit death penalty, because capital punishment was permissed in 1791. These court justices also said that modern methods of punishment that did not exist in 1791 may violate the clause if they are designed to inflict pain. Other than some who disagree with parts of the Eighth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment wasn’t challenged much at all. Although American culture has a stigma against criminals, they seem to support the Eighth Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.
Even though the Eighth Amendment hasn’t been challenged much since its ratification, it has experienced many developments, and has impacted other people. For example, in 1972, in the Supreme Court Case Furman v. Georgia, the Supreme Court deemed that Georgia’s law condoning the death penalty violated the Eighth Amendment. This ended many states’ death penalty, until 35 of these many states drafted new death penalty laws under which judges and juries were given factors to decide the appropriateness of the death penalty. This occurred in 1976 under Gregg v. Georgia. The Supreme Court also decided under Ingraham v. Wright (1977) that the Eighth Amendment only applied to punishment of criminal offenses, not the corporal punishment of students. This affected many students throughout their educations after fighting to escape corporal punishment in schools which was sometimes extreme. While our moral compasses disagree, students were ruled not protected by the Eighth Amendment. In Hutto v. Finney in 1978, the Supreme Court found Arkansas’ practice of isolating prisoners for 30 days cruel and unusual, but bases it on the circumstance of not how long the prisoners are isolated, but the conditions in the prisons. The Eighth Amendment has gone through a lot of deliberation in Supreme Court cases, and has gone through many changes.
One of the biggest controversies regarding this amendment is execution of minors. Many people have deemed this cruel and unusual punishment and a violation of the Eighth Amendment because minors are charged differently in court. Henceforth, in 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the death penalty was ruled cruel and unusual punishment for those 17 and younger. This is very recent news and a very recent development of this amendment and has applied greatly to minors in recent years.