I really fucking hate the interpretation that it means it only prohibits punishments that are both cruel and unusual. I could easily see someone making the (bullshit) argument that 1,000 year sentences are not unusual. Many “life” sentences are technically hundreds of years.
I’m struggling to find an interpretation under which artificially extending the psychologically feelable length of the punishment of a prisoner is not unusual. Fortunately, it’s not likely to come into effect. Still, the cruelty is astounding
One might argue that because we already sentence people for hundreds of years for things that actually causing them to serve those sentences rather than dying is not unusual.
I still think it’s unusua, myself. Using substances to elicit pain is not typical.
Sentences are meant to signal for how long can the Government deprive an individual of their liberty, it under no circumstances allows the Government to torture a prisoner with psychoactive drugs. It’s specifies actual, real time, not how the prisoner perciceves it. Under the same logic, the prisoner could use the idiomatic expressions ‘it’s been a lifetime’ to claim his life sentence is served.
If this is not a PRIME example of what the 8th amendment is trying to prevent, I don’t know what is.
I really fucking hate the interpretation that it means it only prohibits punishments that are both cruel and unusual. I could easily see someone making the (bullshit) argument that 1,000 year sentences are not unusual. Many “life” sentences are technically hundreds of years.
Black Mirror-ass punishments.
I’m struggling to find an interpretation under which artificially extending the psychologically feelable length of the punishment of a prisoner is not unusual. Fortunately, it’s not likely to come into effect. Still, the cruelty is astounding
One might argue that because we already sentence people for hundreds of years for things that actually causing them to serve those sentences rather than dying is not unusual.
I still think it’s unusua, myself. Using substances to elicit pain is not typical.
Sentences are meant to signal for how long can the Government deprive an individual of their liberty, it under no circumstances allows the Government to torture a prisoner with psychoactive drugs. It’s specifies actual, real time, not how the prisoner perciceves it. Under the same logic, the prisoner could use the idiomatic expressions ‘it’s been a lifetime’ to claim his life sentence is served.