Belgium and the Netherlands have an interesting arrangement, an example of economics and incentives working clearly in the public law field. Belgium has more convicts than it can accomodate in its prisons. Neighboring Netherlands has the opposite problem: not enough prisoners. Several years ago, it was facing having to shutter some facilities. But then the […]
Archive | Eighth Amendment
A Rare Decision Holding a Potential Life Sentence To Be “Cruel and Unusual Punishment”
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 […]
Justice Sotomayor Votes to Review and then Reverse Pro Se Prisoner Case Lower Courts Found “Patently Frivolous”
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 […]