Cruel and Unusual: The American Death Penalty and the Founders' Eighth Amendment

“[E]xcellent history. . . . So how does a society that shed many of its old cruelties — slavery, floggings, lynchings, executions of the criminally insane — still cling to the ultimate punishment? This is what Mr. Bessler’s book seeks to answer, and in so doing, it argues persuasively that the death penalty, infested with randomness and bias, is a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishments.”–Baltimore Sun

“Bessler offers a thought-provoking examination of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment” in the ongoing debate over the constitutionality of capital punishment. . . . As a starting point for reasoned discourse, this is a remarkably thorough, compelling achievement. . . . Highly recommended.”–Choice

“Cruel and Unusual provides a wealth of interesting information.” —Journal of American History

“Bessler sees three paths to abolition: legislative repeal, judicial abolition, and disuse, and maintains that all three are presently at work, and that it is just a matter of time before the United States decides, like Justice Harry Blackmun did prior to his retire- ment from the Supreme Court, that it “shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.”–Political Science Quarterly

“A searing indictment of capital punishment, this pioneering history of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause is destined to reframe America’s death penalty debate. As a definitive account of the Eighth Amendment’s origins and the Founding Fathers’ own ambivalent views on executions, it will forever change our perceptions of cruelty and penal reform in the founding era. This book, which exposes the brutality of state-sanctioned killing, is a must-read.”–Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the United States and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions

JOHN D. BESSLER is an associate professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown University Law Center.