The can on “cruel and unusual punishment” had always been a farce.
It is said that it has to be both {cruel && unusual} simultaneously to be unconstitutional. The more they carry out these “new methods” like nitrogen gassing the more ‘usual’ it becomes.
well no, nitrogen gassings aren’t “cruel”, they’re novel.
What they mean when they say cruel and unusual is some shit like strapping a guy into a 2007 camry, sending it down a mountain into a fucking lake, until he drowns.
That’s oddly specific. Did I miss something?
no, it’s just an example of something that would be considered both cruel, and unusual punishment, to provide a sufficient example.
You can’t just look at something like nitrogen gassing and go “its cruel because it’s killing someone, and also unusual because it isn’t utilized often” It has to be literally cruel, as in, you shouldn’t do it period (general US laws would forbid it kind of a thing) and unusual in the sense that you would literally never do it.
Oh, hypothetically speaking, I’m not even certain that would qualify as cruel & unusual anymore if they were to run out of alternatives.
