Eighth Amendment: Law To Prevent Excess Penalties

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The Eighth Amendment is also known as Amendment VIII was ratified on 15th December 1791 along with the rest of the Bill of Rights. The amendment states that the federal government should not impose excessive bail, fines, or even cruel and unusual punishments.

The rights mentioned in the amendment were originally spelled out in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and so this amendment was held in controversies for many years.

The amendment bounds the federal government from imposing harsh punishment and an unreasonable fine on the criminal defendant before or after the conviction. It works to protect the defendant from paying a high amount to be released from jail when the trial is awaited.

The 8th amendment includes three clauses- (a) excessive bail clause, (b) excessive fine clause, (c) cruel and unusual punishment clause. All the three clauses mentioned in the amendment are made to protect the defendant from undue fines and punishment that is the fines and the punishment should be given according to the complexity and the severity of the crime.

a. Excessive Bail Clause: In a case, if a person is ...
... accused and arrested for any crime, then the judge may set an amount to be paid to get released from the jail till the trial is awaited. The amount set by the judge is called “bail.” When determining the amount of bail there are certain points that the judge has to take into consideration like the seriousness of the crime, flight risk of the accused, and the evidence against the accused. But the amount should not be too high that it may be difficult for the accused to pay.

b. Excessive Fines Clause: In some crimes, punishment involves paying some fine to the government. The excessive fine clause prohibits the government from imposing fines that are not reasonable and unproportionate to the crime committed.

c. Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause: This part of the 8th amendment is the most famous and has always been a part of controversies that how should the cruelty of punishment be measured? What are the punishments that come under cruel and unusual punishment? Is capital punishment cruel or unusual?
This clause is meant to prevent any type of horrible punishment like cutting off any body part may be hands, fingers, or legs, beheading, burning alive, or any punishment that may include mental or physical torture.

Clearing the doubts Supreme court ruled that death penalty punishment is not forbidden under the 8th amendment’s “cruel and unusual punishment clause”. For some instances, the supreme court has stopped capital punishment, but for some crimes, it is permissible like in the case of murder or some serious crime.

Examples of cases of 8th Amendment:

- The United States v. Salerno (1987)- this case of the United States supreme court in which the federal courts were allowed to detain the accused in jail before trial if the government was successful in proving that the accused was dangerous to people and community if granted bail. This did not violate the Excessive Bail Clause of the amendment.

- Stack v. Boyle (1951), In this case, the members of the Communist Party were arrested with a charge of conspiring to violate the Smith Act. In this case, the bail amount that was set by the District court was $ 50,000. The accused or the defendant then claimed that the amount set was high thereby it violated the Excessive bail clause.

- Austin v. The United States(1993), in this case, the supreme court ruled that the excessive fine clause of the 8th amendment applies to the civil forfeiture cases.

So, in simple words, the Eighth Amendment to the United States can be stated as the law that prohibits the federal government from imposing excess fines, excess bail, or harsh or cruel punishment. That means that there should be a reasonable amount for imposing fines and bail, that the defendants could pay. The amendment was initially applied to the federal government and was later enforced at the state level in 1962.

For more information please visit: https://www.getlegal.com/legal-info-center/legal-research/u-s-constitution/8th-amendment/