Essay Sample on Punishment Under the Eighth Amendment

Introduction

The Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits the government from imposing excessive fines and bails or cruel and unusual punishments. In particular, the amendment helps guarantee due process to convicted criminals and prohibits such punishments that may be deliberately degrading, too severe for the committed crime, and torture. However, some of the execution methods that people may feel to be painful are not categorized as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. In history, some painful execution methods have been used including burning, boiling, hanging, crucifixion, Catherine wheel, sewed in half, and crushing of the head among others. This paper will demonstrate that while these horrific execution styles of the past do not exist anymore, painful executions are not considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

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Discussion

In the US today, many people believe that modern times have changed the attitude of the state. The majority of the people assume that while the death penalty is allowed, the execution would be carried out painlessly and mercifully, especially with the introduction of the lethal injection. However, this is not the case and the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee such beliefs.

Presently, 29 states in the US provide for capital punishment and they all prefer the lethal injection for execution. Also, 16 states have alternative methods of execution including hanging, nitrogen hypoxia, firing squad, lethal gas, and electrocution (Kennedy, 2020). All these methods of execution have been invented as an attempt to make the execution of a condemned criminal as merciful and painlessly as possible. However, despite these attempts, pain is a reality in executions, including those of today. With each lethal injection, for example, researchers are revealing how those who are executed may be suffering extreme pains.

The states go to great lengths to make lethal injections look painless and merciful as would be a medical procedure. Lethal injections today involve protocols, people in white coats, pharmaceuticals, and medical equipment. All these protocols are done by the state to try to assure the public that the exercise is a sober activity. However, the truth is that lethal injection is not subject to pharmaceutical or medical regulations (Segura, 2019). In some lethal injection cases, convicts have been recorded to have declared a feeling of burning on the entire body before dying.

In light of those revelations, courts have outlined that to be a constitutionally valid form of punishment, the lethal injection does not need to be free of pain. The pentobarbital drug that is injected in large quantities in executions is associated with the feeling of burning once injected. The burning occurs inside the veins first and then spreads to the rest of the body. Autopsies on the bodies of executed inmates have shown extensive internal organ damage that cannot be seen by those present, thereby refuting the idea that the drug induces deep sleep as previously believed (Segura, 2019).

For example, Christopher Young, a 34-year-old convicted killer groaned and reported tasting the lethal drug in his throat on top of a burning sensation as he was executed in Texas in 2018 (Kitching & Evans, 2018). Before dying, he reported: “I can taste it in my throat.” In that execution, the inmate is thought to have suffered the pain for at least fifteen minutes. Such scenes are not very different from the horror tales of flames shooting out of a prisoner's head and chambers filled with smoke during the electrocution.

Lethal Injection

In other cases of lethal injection executions that have gone wrong, doses of the lethal drug have had to be added and inmates have been reported to have shuddered, mouthed, and blinked for over thirty minutes before dying (Kitching & Evans, 2018). During the entire process, the inmate appeared to be conscious.

Despite the constitutional nature of the executions carried out across the various states, scientists and witnesses have warned for years that most of the moments are extremely painful. For example, a study carried out in 2005 concluded that 90% of inmates undergoing lethal injection felt pain just like Christopher Young. The study added that at least 40% of the prisoners would have been conscious and aware as they were dying (Motluk, 2005). Normally, the procedure involves the injection of three substances to induce anesthesia, relaxation of muscles, and stopping of the heart.

Ineffective Administration

Part of the pain that prisoners undergo is as a result of the ineffective administration of the anesthesia. According to Alison Motluk (2005), nurses and doctored are prohibited by the ethical guidelines of the healthcare profession from assisting or participating in executions. As a result, those technicians who participate in executions have no adequate training in the administration of anesthetics. As he argues, it is simplistic to argue that 2 to 3 grams of sodium thiopental is a guaranteed procedure, especially when administered by a person without any knowledge about the pharmaceutical effects of a drug.

Motluk (2005) also argues that with their bodies flooded with adrenaline, the anxious people on death row may require more of the drug to render them unconscious. Hence, the lethal injection is no more humane than electrocution or the gas chamber that is considered horrific in today’s standards.

Based on postmortem data on blood levels in 49 executed prisoners, the levels of sodium thiopental was found to vary drastically from 8.2 milligrams per liter to mere traces. According to the results, up to 43 of these inmates may have been sentient while 21 may have been fully aware with the majority unable to show pain due to the effects of a muscle relaxant (Segura, 2019). This condition was demonstrated in the lethal injection execution in Ohio involving Van Hook in July of 2018. After the injection, the victim is said to have experienced labored breathing including wheezing and gasping that was loud enough to be heard from the distant witness room.

According to Segura (2019), there is an existing pattern of showing signs of pulmonary edema among those executed. Pulmonary edema is the accumulation of fluid in the lungs and the presence of bloody froth from the lungs is evidence of a sudden, severe, and painful buildup of this fluid. Pulmonary edema has been described as feeling like drowning with experts likening the effect of the drug to being buried alive while experiencing a fire in the veins.

Disturbing Revelations

Therefore, it may come as a surprise given these disturbing revelations that the constitution does not guarantee a painless execution. Alone, pain does not amount to “cruel and unusual punishment” that is forbidden by the constitution. In one of the landmark cases regarding this issue, the Supreme Court determined that the use of lethal injection in a man with a condition that might have increased his pain during execution was not a violation of the constitution's Eighth Amendment as argued by the plaintiff. Hence, while the amendment forbids cruel and unusual treatment, the provision does not guarantee a person convicted will face a painless death.

Hence, from its very inception, the Eighth Amendment was meant to tolerate various methods of execution that involve a significant amount of pain. The amendment only forbids only methods that are considered very cruel and intensify death sentence by "superadding" an enormous amount of disgrace, pain, and terror that has not been witnessed so far.

Unusual Punishments

To establish that the chosen method of execution by a state “superadds” pain to the process of execution, a convict must demonstrate that there is an available alternative method of execution that would reduce the pain substantially and that that particular state has refused to adopt that alternative without a legitimate reason (Kennedy, 2020). Even when an arguably more humane method becomes available, the amendment does not suggest that traditional methods of execution accepted by the state necessarily become unconstitutional.

So what does "cruel and unusual punishment" exactly mean within the Eighth Amendment? The framers of the Constitution expected that the list of prohibited punishments would evolve over time as the sense of decency of the society evolved. The clue to this line of thinking comes from the debates of the First Congress that proposed the amendment. Despite Livermore’s complaint about the vagueness of the language, the amendment was ratified. However, in 1958 in the case of Trop v Dulles, the Supreme Court endorsed the view that what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment should evolve, with society doing away with those punishments that offend society (Kennedy, 2020).

Throughout the history of the country, various execution methods have been used to perform the death penalty. In early history, the hanging of inmates was almost the universal form of execution. In line with the thought of an evolving sense of decency, states began to adopt electrocution as a substitute for hanging in the late 19th century and continuing into the 20th century (Kennedy, 2020). The change to electrocution was based on the belief that electrocution was more humane and less painful than hanging. Later in the 1970s, as the sense of decency evolved, states started to adopt execution by lethal injection because it was believed to cause less pain in comparison to electrocution.

Just like electrocution, lethal injection was considered more humane and a good alternative to electrocution, the gas chamber, and firing squads. To date, the majority of the states that allow for the death penalty use lethal injection because it is considered as the most humane and the least painful of all methods of execution. Consequently, while the execution of inmates by lethal injection is believed to be painful, and morally wrong, it does not amount to the infliction of pain that is barred by the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution.

Conclusion

The paper sought to demonstrate that while horrific execution styles of the past do not exist anymore, the painful executions of today including lethal injection are not considered cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. As observed, the execution of inmates has evolved from such rudimentary and horrific methods such as boiling and burning on a stick to electrocution and lethal injection. Hence, while past cases of lethal injection have proved to be painful, the lethal injection represents a significant improvement in humanness in execution methods. Most importantly, unless a more humane method is discovered, the lethal injection among other contemporary execution methods does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment as outlined in the Eighth Amendment of the US constitution.

References

Kennedy, R. (2020, Jul 21). Painful Executions are not Cruel and Unusual Punishment under the Eighth Amendment. https://www.deathpenaltyblog.com/painful-executions-are-not-cruel-and-unusual-punishment-under-the-eighth-amendment/

Kitching, C., & Evans, N. (2018, Jul 18). Texas execution: Christopher Young groans "I taste it in my throat" as lethal injection surges through veins. Mirror.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/texas-execution-christopher-young-groans-12940027

Motluk, A. (2005, Apr 14). Execution by injection far from painless. Newscientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7269-execution-by-injection-far-from-painless/

Segura, L. (2019, Feb 7). Ohio’s governor stopped an execution over fears it would feel like waterboarding. The Intercept.
https://theintercept.com/2019/02/07/death-penalty-lethal-injection-midazolam-ohio/.