Archive | Eighth Amendment

Despite the Court’s recent decisions limiting life sentences for juvenile defendants, generally speaking it’s very rare for courts to hold that sentences other than death sentences constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.” But State v. Proctor (Kan. Ct. App. July 6, 2012) so holds, in a way that seems likely to affect many similar cases in Kansas (and perhaps in other states that have similar schemes):

In this case, the court must address the constitutionality of a sentence potentially subjecting Defendant Daniel Proctor to lifetime postrelease supervision and, in turn, to imprisonment for life without parole if he were later to commit any felony, including a property crime otherwise calling for probation. Proctor faces that prospect because he pled guilty to a sex offense — aggravated indecent solicitation of a child — for which he has received a permissible guideline sentence of probation. For Proctor, a man in his early 20’s, the statutory sentencing scheme could put him behind bars for 50 years if he were to shoplift a $1,000 ring or computer or to write a bad check for them.

Given Proctor’s circumstances and the peculiarly harsh result that could be inflicted on him, the sentence violates the protections against cruel and unusual punishment contained in § 9 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights and the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The punishment may be considered grossly disproportionate in that context and incompatible with the general purposes of incarceration as a sanction in the criminal justice system. We, therefore, vacate the sentence imposed on Proctor to that extent and remand to the Saline County District Court for resentencing.

The governing statutes create the prospect of an exceptionally severe punishment … for persons convicted of designated sex offenses who then commit property crimes. For Proctor, the disparity between

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Today Justice Sotomayor authored what strikes me as a rather remarkable dissent from denial of certiorari in Pitre v. Cain, a pro se Eighth Amendment case brought by a prison inmate whose case was dismissed as “patently frivolous” by the trial court and affirmed by the Fifth Circuit in a short one-paragraph order. What is it about this pro se prisoner case that grabbed Justice Sotomayor’s attention, and led her not only to say that she would have granted the case, but to announce that she would have voted in the inmate’s favor?

Let’s take a look.

Pitre is an HIV-positive inmate in the Louisiana state prison system who has been prescribed medication to treat his HIV. In 2008, he was transferred to a particular corrections facility, the Phelps Correctional Center, where inmates apparently have to do hard labor. Pitre decided to protest the transfer by refusing to take his HIV medication. Pitre was then made to do hard labor like the other inmates in the facility, and he has been really struggling to do the work given his illness and his failure to take his medication. Pitre complained that the state was making him do harder labor than he could do given his illness, in violation of his constitutional rights. The state responded that Pitre was bringing it on himself because he was refusing to take his medication that would enable him to do the work. In effect, each side blamed the other: Pitre blamed the state for making him work when he was in such bad shape, and the state blamed Pitre for refusing to take his medication so that he was in such bad shape in the first place.

The magistrate judge agreed with the state’s view, and recommended that the case be dismissed as “patently […]