ABSTRACT
The history of the Eighth Amendment as interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States is bleak. Even today, when the sentiment of the country has become evident in the steady reduction of executions, the Court is unlikely to apply the Eighth Amendment to strike down the death penalty. Every form of execution—whether by the electric chair, hanging, shooting, gas, or whatever the legislatures have devised—has been accepted as valid by the Supreme Court. To declare a sick person a criminal, the Court said, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court has refused to condemn sterilization, the most likely candidate for condemnation, reminiscent as it is of the mutilations that were the original cause of the prohibition. The Court can alleviate the immediate situation by reversing a few sentences of execution under the Fourteenth Amendment, requiring equality of treatment.
