i am sure it will be challenged as it goes against SCOTUS precedent for only allowing the death penalty for murder.
Allan
It didn’t stop people from committing capital offenses back then and it probably wouldn’t now. But it would end recidivism with capital crimes.
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So does hanging if done right … and it’s a lot less messy.
It almost certainly is painless. It would be such a shock to the nervous system that the brain would not translate it as pain. Pain is a warning system for the body that something is seriously wrong. A severe physical shock, such as for instance, falling flat on the ground from a great height or say having limbs blown off by explosives doesn’t cause pain initially (or so survivors have reported.) It is only after the nerves begin to calm down does the person feel what we call pain. (I’m sure we have all heard of stories of survivors of severe injuries who reported they were unaware of their injuries until they saw massive amounts of blood or perhaps tried to use a missing limb and then the pain set in.) A beheading is about as severe shock as the nervous system can experience and there is no calming down period afterwards before the brain blanks out.
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That’s why professional executioners were once a thing. Not just anyone can do a proper hanging or beheading with a sword. The Guillotine was essentially invented because the lack of a sufficient number of competent professional beheaders resulted in too many botched executions. It was considered a humane replacement for the imperfect or incompetent axman.
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Very true. I saw a documentary on the Iraq war where a soldier was shot in the shoulder by an insurgent with a 7.62mm Dragonov. It literally destroyed his shoulder but he said he never noticed the pain until the units medic pointed it out to him. His adrenaline was pumping so hard that he was able to carry another wounded soldier to safety before he was checked out. He said he basically felt something like a baseball bat hit him in the shoulder and that’s all he noticed at first.
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One of the main problems back then was that executioners were also usually alcoholics. So half the time you ended up with a guy who was drunk as ■■■■ being tasked with cutting your head off with a sword.
A Frenchman, an Englishman, and an engineer were slated to die by guillotine.
First the Frenchman. Before placing his head into position he shouted, “Viva la France!!” And then they let it rip. Half way down the blade jammed. The executioner said because it failed he was free to go.
Then the Englishman. “Long live the King!!” And he bravely placed his head into position. Again, the blade stopped part way down. The executioner said he was free to go.
Then the engineer. As he approached the instrument of death he looked up, pointed, and said, “Oh, I see why it’s getting stuck …”
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I expect if my job was cutting off heads with a sword, I’d drink a lot too. 
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I am willing to bet that this court is prepared to fundamentally alter death penalty jurisprudence, just as it has done with guns and abortion.
But to do so effectively, it must reach back well before Furman.
It needs to reach back to 1958, to Trop v Dulles.
Wipe out Trop v Dulles and specifically overturn every death penalty precedent from Furman to present.
The Eighth Amendment, properly interpretated, has the following effects:
- It bans attainders not specifically authorized by the legislature.
- It bars deliberately tortuous attainders.
It does NOT guarantee defendants a painless death. Pain incidental to an execution method, such as hanging, firing squad or electric chair is perfectly acceptable, if the execution is carried out in a way to assure a prompt death.
Now if the firing squad was instructed to fire at the extremities to “bleed out” the defendant, you would have an 8th Amendment issue.
The founders had in mind the breaking wheel, quartering and burning at the stake. Methods intended to be deliberately tortuous. Hanging was clearly constitutional. Dissection of the defendants corpse after the execution was clearly constitutional. The pillory was clearly constitutional. The death penalty for numerous crimes other than murder was clearly constitutional.
(NOTE: I am not advocating for bringing back the pillory or dissection, just stating they are constitutional under a correct understanding of the 8th Amendment.)
I would bring back the death penalty for rape and child sexual exploitation.
The Warren Court pulled its 8th Amendment jurisprudence out of its ass, just making it up as they went along. Evolving standards of society has zero place in constitutional law.
It is up to the Congress and the State Legislatures to act in the public interest in setting attainders. It is not the place of the judiciary to usurp this role.
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That’s a myth.
Which part?
Dissection is not tortue. It is not possible to torture a dead person.
That they hung horse thieves. Especially summarily.
According to the old timers, they did in my state. I was told that it was because a horse was so valuable to the livelihood of families and their only means of travel.
From AI: Horse theft has been a capital offense in Kentucky since 1792, when the state adopted Virginia’s law on the subject. However, Kentucky abolished public hanging in 1880 and again in 1938 after the public hanging of Rainey Bethea in 1936.
It’s a myth.
It was not meant to be torture in the physical sense, but in the mental sense. We were still coming out of the middle ages in some aspects in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. People were far more superstitious and many people thought that denial of a Christian burial put their soul at risk. Some defendants were more fearful of the dissection and lack of burial, than the actual death sentence. Now there was also a practical aspect to the law, to provide much needed cadavers for medical research and instruction. But clearly it had a punitive aspect as well. In the United States, denial of a Christian funeral and burial had the same effect as it did in England.
The Crimes Act of 1825 completely replaced all previous criminal legislation and dissection was not provided for and I do not believe it has existed in any State since that time period.
In today’s climate, dissection would probably not have any useful effect as people are far less religious and superstitious today. And there appears to be a sufficient supply of cadavers without it.
of course that is originalist thinking (you) not a living constitution.
we as human being have evolved since 1784. the constitution needs to evolve also.
many states have done away with barbarism, time to drag the rest of the country with us.
Allan
You truly believe that.
I don’t agree, but won’t belabor the point.
