An Overview of Recent Supreme Court Eighth Amendment Jurisprudence in Light of Graham v. Florida

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
William C. Westfall
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Eighth Amendment

scholarly journals An Argument for the Admissibility of Execution Impact Evidence in Pennsylvania

2005 ◽  
Vol 67 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Paige H. Forster
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Capital Trials ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Penalty Phase

In 1991, the United States Supreme Court made a significant change to sentencing proceedings during capital trials. The Court ruled in Payne v. Tennessee that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit “victim impact evidence,” testimony about the character of the murder victim and the impact of the death on the victim’s family. The Payne decision permits highly emotional testimony from family members to enter into the penalty phase of a death penalty trial.

City of Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital: Government Responsibility for an Arrestee's Medical Care

1983 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-373
Author(s):  
William Contente
Keyword(s):  
Medical Care ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
General Hospital ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Massachusetts General Hospital ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fourteenth Amendment ◽  
Government Responsibility ◽  
Physical Restraints ◽  
Eighth Amendment

AbstractCity of Revere v. Massachusetts General Hospital presented the United States Supreme Court with its first opportunity to consider whether a state or municipality has a constitutional duty to pay for medical treatment received by an individual in police custody. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had held that the city had an eighth amendment duty to pay for an arrestee's treatment. The U.S. Supreme Court reversed, observing that eighth amendment rights and duties are not implicated prior to conviction and that fourteenth amendment due process concerns were met once the arrestee received adequate medical care. No obligation to pay arises, the Court held, absent a specific state law provision requiring such payment. Because arrestees are subject to physical restraints similar to those imposed on convicted prisoners, this Case Comment argues that courts undertaking to determine the scope of a state's duty to provide treatment to arrestees should apply a due process standard which draws upon eighth amendment analysis. The Comment concludes that under such an eighth amendment equivalence approach, no duty to pay arises because the state's failure to pay the health care provider does not reflect "deliberate indifference" towards the recipient of the treatment.

scholarly journals Eighteen Is Not a Magic Number: Why the Eighth Amendment Requires Protection for Youth Aged Eighteen to Twenty-Five

2020 ◽  
pp. 807
Author(s):  
Tirza Mullin
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
Magic Number ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
Diminished Capacity ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
The Supreme Court

The Eighth Amendment protects a criminal defendant’s right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. This Note argues that any punishment of eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds is cruel and unusual without considering their youthfulness at every stage of the criminal process, and that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment for these youths to be automatically treated as fully-developed adults. This Note will explore in depth how juveniles differ from adults, both socially and scientifically, and how the criminal justice system fails every youth aged eighteen- to twenty-five by subjecting them to criminal, rather than juvenile, court without considering their youthfulness and diminished capacity. This Note proposes three reforms that, implemented together, aim to remedy this Eighth Amendment violation. First, the Supreme Court should apply the seminal cases of Miller, Roper, and Graham to eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds. Second, all states should extend the age of juvenile jurisdiction to twenty-five, processing offenders twenty-five and younger through the juvenile system accordingly. Finally, every actor in the system—including courts, lawyers, and legislatures—should label eighteen- to twenty-five-year-olds as “youth” and consider their age at every stage of the criminal system.

scholarly journals Revisiting Death's Difference: The Philosophical Anthropology of the U.S. Death Penalty and the Impossibility of Capital Due Process

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-208
Author(s):  
G.P. Marcar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Death Penalty ◽  
Due Process ◽  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Eighth Amendment ◽  
Legal Challenges ◽  
The U.S

AbstractWithin the United States, legal challenges to the death penalty have held it to be a “cruel and unusual” punishment (contrary to the Eighth Amendment) or arbitrarily and unfairly enacted (contrary to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments). The Eighth Amendment requires that punishments not be disproportionate or purposeless. In recent rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has adopted a piecemeal approach to this matter. In regard to particular classes of defendant, the Court has sought to rule on whether death is likely to be a proportional and purposeful punishment, as well as whether—given the condition of these defendants—such a determination can be reliably and accurately gauged. This article will suggest a different approach. Instead of asking whether, given the nature of certain categories of human defendant, the death penalty is constitutional in their case, I will begin by asking what—given the nature of the U.S. death penalty—one must believe about human beings for death to be a proportionate punishment. From this, I will argue that to believe that these penal goals are capable of fulfilment by the death penalty entails commitment to an empirically unconfirmable philosophical anthropology. On this basis, it will be further argued that the beliefs required for the U.S. death penalty's proportional and purposeful instigation (pursuant to the Eighth Amendment) are not congruent with the demands of legal due process.

Recent Legal Developments: Criminal Justice Decisions of the United States Supreme Court, 2,020 Term

2021 ◽  
pp. 073401682110595
Author(s):  
Craig Hemmens ◽  
Cortney Dalton ◽  
Christopher Dollar
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Fourth Amendment ◽  
United States Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Supreme ◽  
Eighth Amendment

In this paper we review and analyze the criminal justice-related decisions of the 2,020 term of the United States Supreme Court. We also provide a summary of the Court’s voting patterns and opinion authorship. Thirteen of the Court’s 57 decisions touched on criminal justice. There were significant decisions involving the Fourth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment, and federal criminal statutes. Each of these is discussed in turn.

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