Cite as: 509 U. S. 25 (1993)
Thomas, J., dissenting
a claim that it does. All of those cases involved challenges to a sentence imposed for a criminal offense.1
The only authorities cited in Estelle that supported the Court's extension of the Eighth Amendment to prison deprivations were lower court decisions (virtually all of which had been decided within the previous 10 years), see id., at 102, 104-105, nn. 10-12, 106, n. 14, and the only one of those decisions upon which the Court placed any substantial reliance was Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F. 2d 571 (CA8 1968). But Jackson, like Estelle itself, simply asserted that the Eighth Amendment applies to prison deprivations; the Eighth Circuit's discussion of the problem consisted of a two-sentence paragraph in which the court was content to state the opposing view and then reject it: "Neither do we wish to draw . . . any meaningful distinction between punishment by way of sentence statutorily prescribed and punishment imposed for prison disciplinary purposes. It seems to us that the Eighth Amendment's proscription has application to both." 404 F. 2d, at 580-581. As in Estelle, there was no analysis of the text or history of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause.2
1 Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153 (1976), was a death penalty case, as were Wilkerson v. Utah, 99 U. S. 130 (1879), In re Kemmler, 136 U. S. 436 (1890), and Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber, 329 U. S. 459 (1947). Weems v. United States, 217 U. S. 349 (1910), involved a challenge to a sentence imposed for the crime of falsifying a document, and Trop v. Dulles, 356 U. S. 86 (1958), presented the question whether revocation of citizenship amounts to cruel and unusual punishment when imposed upon those who desert the military.
2 Jackson may in any event be distinguishable. That case involved an Eighth Amendment challenge to the use of the "strap" as a disciplinary measure in Arkansas prisons, and it is at least arguable that whipping a prisoner who has violated a prison rule is sufficiently analogous to imposing a sentence for violation of a criminal law that the Eighth Amendment is implicated. But disciplinary measures for violating prison rules are quite different from inadequate medical care or housing a prisoner with a heavy smoker.
41
Page: Index Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007