If the person doesn't show up for his trial, then he forfeits the money he gave as bail. If the person shows up on their trial date, the bail money is returned to them. Sometimes the bail required by a court can be very high and the accused person may not have enough to pay it.
In this case, a bail bondsman can loan the money to the accused person for a fee. If the person doesn't show up for the trial, the bondsman loses his money as well, so it is in the bondsman's interest that the accused show up for trial.
When people do not show up for trial, bondsmen often employ bounty hunters to find the person and return them to the jail so they can get their money back. There are several popular television shows such as "Dog, the Bounty Hunter," that show how bounty hunters do their work. The Excessive Bail Clause of the 8th Amendment prohibits courts from requiring unreasonably large amounts for bail. If the amounts are too large and people cannot pay them, they would have to stay in jail until their trial date.
This would prevent an accused person from preparing their defense adequately, since it would be hard to prepare a defense from jail. In addition, allowing an accused person out on bail allows them to continue working to provide for their family and do other normal activities and also reduces expenses for the local jail since they will not have to house and feed the accused.
It is also not fair to leave a person in jail for a long period of time who has merely been accused of a crime because, in the American legal system, people are presumed to be innocent until they are proven guilty. At this stage, they have merely been accused of wrong doing and nothing has yet been proven.
At the same time, courts must set the bail to a sufficiently high amount so that the accused person will have an incentive to show up for their trial because if they do not show up, they will lose their money. If the bail is too small, the person may flee or just not show up. Courts must also protect the community. So in some cases, they will not allow someone to pay bail and get out of jail. This happens if the alleged crime is particularly heinous or if releasing the person would cause some unusually dangerous threat to the community.
The Excessive Fines Clause prevents judges from levying excessive fines, but what amount is excessive? In actuality, fines are rarely overturned by higher courts unless the judge abused his discretion when imposing the fine. Using this standard, a higher court may reverse a lower court's arbitrary, exorbitant fines if they are "so grossly excessive as to amount to a deprivation of property without due process of law," Water-Pierce Oil Co. Fines are rarely reversed due to any of these 8th Amendment conditions.
Appeals courts usually defer to the lower courts in cases regarding challenges based on violations of the Excessive Bail Clause or Excessive Fines Clause. Courts give much more scrutiny, however, to cases alleging violations of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.
Catherine Hayes burning at the stake for murdering her husband Tyburn, England, The 8th Amendment requires that punishments for crimes be in proportion to the crime committed. Punishments that are far greater than the crime should demand can be overturned by a higher court.
For example, the courts have ruled that the death penalty is out of proportion to any other crime than one where a murder is committed, except for crimes against the government such as treason and spying. The courts have also ruled that if a sentence is inhuman, outrageous, or shocking to the social conscience, it is a cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment. Such things as burning at the stake, castration, crucifixion, breaking on the wheel, cutting off body parts and so on, fall into this category.
In particular, cases involving the death penalty have received a lot of scrutiny in regards to the 8th Amendment. There are some people who believe all death penalties constitute a cruel and unusual punishment. Others disagree, believing that death is an appropriate punishment in some cases. The courts have generally decided that death is an appropriate punishment for murder, but not for other crimes. Even so, the death penalty is "cruel and unusual" if there are mitigating factors that would prohibit death as a punishment, such as if the convicted person was mentally incompetent at the time the crime was committed.
The 8th Amendment has its origin in the British Magna Carta of In it, the idea that punishments ought to fit the crime was codified in the following words - "A free man shall not be [fined] for a small offense unless according to the measure of the offense, and for a great offense he shall be [fined] according to the greatness of the offense. In , this principle was put into the English Bill of Rights by Parliament, declaring "as their ancestors in like cases have usually done Oates was tried and convicted of lying in court.
Several people had been executed as a result of his untrue statements in court. The punishment he received included imprisonment and an annual ordeal which included being confined in a pillory for two days and one day of being whipped while tied to a moving cart.
The pillory is a device where the person's head and hands are secured in a wooden frame, which is usually placed in a public place where passersby can taunt them and throw garbage at them. The main purpose for such a device is public humiliation. Both of these punishments, the pillory and whipping, were common punishments at that time. What was so offensive to the English people was the fact that the punishment was to be given over and over again every year.
Though the punishments were ordinary, they became extraordinary and excessive due to their repetition year after year. Members of Parliament referred to the Titus Oates case specifically when explaining why they wrote these provisions about excessive punishment into the English Bill of Rights of The famous British jurist and judge Sir William Blackstone is one of the most often quoted persons by the Founding Fathers. He was the preeminent lawyer and legal analyst of his time and his writings were studied and adhered to by generations of English lawyers.
In Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England , he says that the "cruel and unusual punishments clause" was added to restrict the discretion of judges and make them follow established and acceptable precedent:.
For the bill of rights has particularly declared, that excessive fines ought not to be imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted: which had a retrospect to some unprecedented proceedings in the court of king's bench, in the reign of king James the second Read Blackstone's complete comments about the proportionality of punishment to a crime here.
This Declaration of Rights was written by George Mason and included the phrase, "That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted," which was drawn nearly word for word from the English Bill of Rights of The Virginia Declaration of Rights was the first statement of belief regarding the rights of man by any American government.
It predated the Virginia Constitution by several weeks and the Declaration of Independence by a few months. Thomas Jefferson is thought to have drawn many ideas for the Declaration of Independence directly from the Virginia Declaration of Rights.
See our page about how Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence here. It is clear that the Founding Fathers were intent to prevent any government from laying abusive fines or punishments on anyone.
When it came time to debate whether or not to adopt the United States Constitution , the issue arose once again. Again the state of Virginia proposed that a Bill of Rights be added to the Constitution and that a statement prohibiting excessive punishments should be included.
Both Virginia and Massachusetts insisted that such a Bill of Rights be added. James Madison , the author of the amendments, included the 8th Amendment in his original list of twelve amendments. The first Congress and the states adopted ten of them. These first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights.
Wilkerson v. Utah ruled that death by firing squad is not considered cruel and unusual punishment. Hamlin v. Michigan ruled that a life sentence without the opportunity of parole for possession of cocaine exceeded grams is warranted.
Lockyer v. Sign in. Log into your account. Password recovery. Recover your password. Forgot your password? Get help. If it fell out of usage for multiple generations, however, it might become cruel and unusual. This has already occurred with respect to some once-traditional applications of the death penalty.
It is no longer constitutional to execute a person for theft, for example, because this punishment fell out of usage for this crime a long time ago, and the punishments that have replaced it are far less severe.
If a court were to find that their effect is significantly harsher than the longstanding punishment practices they have replaced, it could appropriately find them cruel and unusual.
Burr lost the election, and he blamed Hamilton, so he challenged Hamilton to a duel. Dueling continued in the United States until the midth century. Burr was never prosecuted for the murder of Hamilton. Today, dueling is deemed unconscionable. No American leader could credibly support dueling as an acceptable method for resolving conflicts.
It is hard for us now to understand how the Framers of our Constitution could embrace such a misguided and barbaric practice. To become a great country, America needs its laws and basic constitutional principles to evolve as our understanding of human capacity and behavior deepens.
The greatness of our Constitution and America itself is dependent on how the Constitution is interpreted to ensure that all people are treated equally and fairly and have the same opportunity to exercise the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as the exclusive group of men who authored the Constitution.
As our notions of fairness, equality, and justice have evolved, so too must our interpretation of the Constitution. No provision of the Constitution enshrines this principle more clearly than the Eighth Amendment. This approach begs complex questions, such as who decides what is decent and what is cruel? Throughout its history, the Court has ruled that certain practices are unconstitutional or indecent even when such practices were popular.
Ending racial segregation in schools or restaurants and striking down bans on interracial marriage never could have been achieved by a popular vote in the American South. Black people were a political minority, and policies that denied their basic rights were extremely popular. Accordingly, progressives believe the Court must protect the disfavored, the unpopular, the minority groups who can expect no protection from officials elected by majority vote.
For progressives, what constitutes cruel punishment cannot be resolved by opinion polls or the popularity of the punishment. The legitimacy of a punishment must be assessed instead by evaluating whether it serves an appropriate and acceptable penological purpose.
In this respect, the Eighth Amendment does not merely prohibit barbaric punishments; it also bars disproportionate penalties. A sentence of life imprisonment without parole may be acceptable for some crimes, but it would violate the Constitution to condemn anyone to die in prison for shoplifting or simple marijuana possession.
For progressives, the constitutionality of a particular punishment cannot be evaluated in the abstract. The decency or legitimacy of a punishment can be assessed reliably only in context.
I believe that the question whether the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment cannot be resolved by simply asking whether a person deserves to die for the crime he has committed. I believe we must first ask whether we deserve to kill. If we have a death penalty that is applied in a racially discriminatory manner, where the race of the victim shapes who gets the death penalty and who does not; if we have a death penalty that is imposed not on the rich and guilty but on the poor and innocent; if we execute people with methods that are torturous and inhumane, then we have a death penalty that violates the Eighth Amendment.
Since the modern era of capital punishment in the United States began in the s, people have been proven innocent after being sentenced to death.
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