The Eighth Amendment, the Death Penalty, and the Supreme Court

The most conser­vat­ive Supreme Court in a century has not yet fully put its stamp on the death penalty in Amer­ica or on condi­tions of confine­ment within pris­ons. Nor, for that matter, have the justices delivered a recent ruling on the ways in which local offi­cials control pretrial deten­tion or impose hefty fines and fees on those who get wrapped up in crim­inal justice systems. The Eighth Amend­ment, as the newly consti­tuted Roberts Court sees it, has yet to be writ­ten even though public debate over capital punish­ment, solit­ary confine­ment, and excess­ive bail often drive broader conver­sa­tions about crim­inal justice in the United States.
Some trends, however, are appar­ent. The depar­ture of Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Gins­burg took from the Supreme Court two justices who suppor­ted key limit­a­tions on the death penalty and expan­ded protec­tions for pris­on­ers under the "cruel and unusual punish­ment" clause of the Eighth Amend­ment.
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