T
he Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
prohibits the imposition of “cruel and unusual
punishment.” Either the imposition of a particular
sentence, or the conduct of corrections officials in
carrying out a sentence, may be challenged under the
Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual
punishment.
Since the 1972 landmark case of Furman v. Georgia,1
numerous Supreme Court cases have considered whether
the imposition of the death penalty, either absolutely or
under certain circumstances, may violate this Eighth
Amendment prohibition. Roper v. Simmons,2 decided
March 1 of this year, prohibits the execution of offenders
who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were com-
mitted. This decision overrules the Supreme Court’s own
prior decision 16 years earlier in the case of Stanford v.
Kentucky,3 and continues the court’s recent trend to nar-
row the availability of the death penalty under the Eighth
Amendment. Like many other of the court’s death penalty
cases, Roper was a close 5-4 decision of the nine justices.
The Supreme Court’s Unique
Approach to Eighth Amendment Cases
When interpreting the language of the Constitution, the
Supreme Court almost always starts with an examination
of a particular clause as it was understood by those who
originally enacted it. The Constitution was originally rati-
fied in 1791, and many present-day questions of interpreta-
tion are decided by determining what the Framers of the
original Constitution understood its terms to mean. Once
this “original intent” is determined, it is extremely rare for
the Supreme Court to depart from it. In this way, interpre-
tation of the language and the meaning of the Constitution
has remained remarkably stable and constant over the
nation’s history.
In many instances, to convince the Supreme Court of
the Framers’ original intent is to win the constitutional
case. However, a notable exception to this general princi-
ple is the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment prohibi-
tion against cruel and unusual punishment. Here, the