The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994

The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to
human dignity," especially torture.
"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion."
"A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society."
"A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary."
Justice Brennan also wrote that he expected no state would pass a law obviously
violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth
Amendment would involve a "cumulative" analysis of the implication of each of the four
principles. In this way, the United States Supreme Court "set the standard that a
punishment would be cruel and unusual [if] it was too severe for the crime, [if] it was
arbitrary, if it offended society's sense of justice, or if it was not more effective than a
less severe penalty."
Punishments Forbidden Regardless of The Crime
In Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U.S. 130 (1878), the Supreme Court commented that drawing
and quartering, public dissection, burning alive, or disembowelment constituted cruel
and unusual punishment. In Thompson v. Oklahoma, 487 U.S. 815 (1988), the
Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty constituted cruel and unusual punishment if
the defendant is under age 16 when the crime was committed. Furthermore, in Roper v.
Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), the Court barred the executing of people who were
under age 18 when the crime was committed. In Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002),
the Court declared that executing people who are mentally handicapped constituted
cruel and unusual punishment.
Punishments Forbidden for Certain Crimes
The case of Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349 (1910), marked the first time that
the Supreme Court exercised judicial review to overturn a criminal sentence as cruel
and unusual. The Court overturned a punishment called cadena temporal, which
mandated "hard and painful labor," shackling for the duration of incarceration, and
permanent civil disabilities. This case is often viewed as establishing a principle of
proportionality under the Eighth Amendment. However, others have written that "it is
hard to view Weems as announcing a constitutional requirement of proportionality."
In Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958), the Supreme Court held that punishing a naturalborn
citizen for a crime by revoking his citizenship is unconstitutional, being "more
primitive than torture" because it involved the "total destruction of the individual's status
in organized society."
In Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660 (1962), the Court decided that a California law
authorizing a 90-day jail sentence for "be[ing] addicted to the use of narcotics" violated
the Eighth Amendment, as narcotics addiction "is apparently an illness," and California
was attempting to punish people based on the state of this illness, rather than for any
specific act. The Court wrote:
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