Constitution bars the states from inflicting such punishment for state crimes, and most state constitutions also prohibit the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment.. In attempting t
Trang 1best-known civil rights leaders In 1992 he surprised many when he openly backed Dennis Archer in the Detroit mayoral race, and encouraged longtime friend Coleman Young
to step down In 1995 Crockett’s story was recounted in a chapter of Black Judges on Justice
Crockett died on September 7, 1997, in Washington, D.C, after suffering a stroke He had been battling bone cancer
FURTHER READINGS House Document No 108–222, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1774–2005 Washington, D.C.:
U.S Government Printing Office Available online at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/hd108-222/index.html (accessed July 17, 2009).
Thomas, Robert McG., Jr “George Crockett Dies at 88; Was
a Civil Rights Crusader ” The New York Times (September 15, 1997) Available online at http://www.
nytimes.com/1997/09/15/us/george-w-crockett-dies-at-88-was-a-civil-rights-crusader.html; website home page:
http://www.nytimes.com (accessed July 17, 2009).
Washington, Linn 1998 Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench New York: New Press.
Wasniewski, Matthew 2008 Black Americans in Congress, 1870–2007 3d ed Washington, D.C.: U.S Congress.
CROP INSURANCE
A contract of indemnity by which, for a specified premium, one party promises to compensate another for the financial loss incurred by the destruction of agricultural products from the forces
of nature, such as rain, hail, frost, or insect infestation
The federal government, acting through the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation, an agency
of theDEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, sponsors such
insurance By improving the economic stability
of agriculture, crop insurance promotes the welfare of the nation
CROSS REFERENCE Agricultural Law.
CROPS Commodities produced from the earth which are planted, raised, and gathered within the course of
a single season
Crops might be produced either naturally or under cultivation This distinction becomes important when determining whether a crop
is to be sold as PERSONAL PROPERTY or as REAL ESTATE, and also in terms of how crops are to be devised
Fructus naturales are crops that are pro-duced by the powers of nature alone, without any harvesting methods They include fruit trees, berries growing on bushes, and hay growing spontaneously from perennial roots They are considered real property when they are not severed from the land, but personal property when severed
Fructus industriales, or emblements, are annual crops that are raised by yearly labor and owe their existence to human intervention and cultivation Such crops include wheat, corn, and vegetables Authorities differ as to whether they constitute real or personal property The ownership of crops is generally held to
be in the owner of the land, whether the crops are natural or cultivated The owner may voluntarily choose to sever and sell the crops, without being obligated to sell the land upon which they are grown The situation often arises
in which the land belongs to one person and the crops belong to another, such as in the case of one person leasing land from another person In such a case, whoever is in possession of the land subject to the consent of the owner may take and carry away the products of land resulting from his or her own care and labor
Ordinarily, crops that are attached to land at the time of a sale pass automatically to the buyer, except where the owner has provided to the contrary Someone disposing of land may, therefore, stipulate the retention of the title to the crops
It has been widely held that a trespasser who enters another person’s land and cultivates
Crops, such as these
green peppers, are
commodities that are
planted and gathered
within a single season.
AP IMAGES
Trang 2crops does not acquire title to them, because
the owner is lawfully entitled to full possession
and enjoyment of his or her property Some
authorities have held that as long as crops
planted by an intruder remain unsevered, they
are the property of the owner of the land upon
which they are planted, whereas severed crops
belong to the trespasser if he or she possesses
the land when the crops are ready to be
harvested
CROSS REFERENCE
Agricultural Law.
CROSS-ACTION
A separate and independent lawsuit brought by
the defendant against a plaintiff for some reason
arising from the same transaction or event that is
the basis for the plaintiff’s lawsuit
Under some circumstances, the court may
order a consolidation of the actions
CROSS-CLAIM
A demand made in a pleading against another
party on the same side of the lawsuit
For example, a manufacturer of desks
shipped 30 desks to a buyer by truck When
the buyer refused to pay because the desks
arrived in a damaged condition, the
manufac-turer sued both the buyer and the trucking
company The buyer did not know whether the
manufacturer or the trucking company was
responsible for the damage, so the buyer served
an answer containing a denial that he owed
money to the manufacturer for unusable desks
and a cross-claim demanding that the trucking
company compensate him for the damage to
the desks
A counterclaim is comparable to a
cross-claim except that it is a cross-claim against an adverse
party in the lawsuit, not a party on the same side
of the lawsuit
CROSS-COMPLAINT
A type of pleading that asserts a claim against any
of the parties suing the person making the
complaint, or against anyone else involved in the
same controversy or having an interest in the same
property that is the subject of the lawsuit
The rules in many states permit or require
a DEFENDANT to make claims for recovery
from another party using a counterclaim or a
CROSS-CLAIMwithin the answer rather than using
a different kind of pleading, but some jurisdic-tions permit a cross-complaint to be used instead of an answer for this purpose
CROSS-DEMAND
A claim made against someone who has already made a demand of the person asserting that claim
These mutual claims are called demands A counterclaim is a kind of cross-demand
CROSS-EXAMINATION The questioning of a witness or party during a trial, hearing, or deposition by the party opposing the one who asked the person to testify in order to evaluate the truth of that person’s testimony, to develop the testimony further, or to accomplish any other objective The interrogation of a witness
or party by the party opposed to the one who called the witness or party, upon a subject raised during direct examination—the initial question-ing of a witness or party—on the merits of that testimony
The scope of cross-examination is generally restricted to matters covered during DIRECT EXAMINATION
CRUEL AND INHUMAN TREATMENT Another name for cruelty, or for the intentional, hostile infliction of physical or mental suffering upon another individual, which is a ground for divorce in many states
Cruel and inhuman treatment ordinarily encompasses mental and physical cruelty of any kind and is also known as cruel and abusive treatment and as cruel and barbarous treatment
CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT Cruel and unusual punishment refers to such punishment as would amount to torture or barbarity, any cruel and degrading punishment not known to the common law, or any fine, penalty, confinement, or treatment that is so disproportionate to the offense as to shock the moral sense of the community
The EIGHTH AMENDMENT to the U.S Consti-tution prohibits the federal government from imposing cruel and unusual punishment for federal crimes The amendment states: “Exces-sive bail shall not be required, nor exces“Exces-sive
Trang 3fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punish-ment inflicted.” The due process clause of the
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENTto the U.S Constitution bars the states from inflicting such punishment for state crimes, and most state constitutions also prohibit the infliction of cruel and unusual punishment
In attempting to define cruel and unusual punishment, federal and state courts have generally analyzed two aspects of punishment:
the method and the amount As to the method
of punishment, the Eighth Amendment clearly bars punishments that were considered cruel at the time of its adoption, such as burning at the stake, crucifixion, or breaking on the wheel (see
In re Kemmler, 136 U.S 436, 10 S Ct 930, 34
L Ed 519[1890]) In Hudson v McMillian, 503 U.S 1, 112 S Ct 995, 117 L Ed 2d 156 (1992), the U.S Supreme Court held that the use of excessive physical force against a prisoner may constitute cruel and unusual punishment even if the prisoner does not suffer serious injury
When an inmate does suffer serious injury from the excessive use of force by prison officials, a violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause is clear In Hope v Pelzer, 536 U.S 730,
122 S Ct 2508, 153 L Ed 2d 666 (2002), the U.S Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment had been contravened when prison
officials had disciplined an inmate for disruptive behavior by handcuffing him to a “hitching post,” once for two hours and once for seven hours, depriving the inmate of his shirt, exposing him to the sun, denying his requests for hydration, and refusing to allow him the opportunity to use the bathroom
At the same time, the cruel and unusual punishment clause does not demand that the state avoid of all risk of pain to aDEFENDANT in carrying out a lawfully imposed sentence For example, In Baze v Rees, —U.S.—, 128 S Ct
1520, 170 L Ed 2d 420 (2008), a group of Kentucky death-row inmates argued that the state’s three-drug lethal injection method of
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT posed an unacceptable risk
of significant pain in violation of the cruel and unusual punishment clause The Court rejected their argument, concluding that existing proto-col for carrying out a death sentence in Kentucky incorporated several safeguards, in-cluding (1) a requirement that the person responsible for inserting intravenous catheters and injecting the lethal drugs possess a mini-mum level of professional experience; (2) a requirement for practice sessions; (3) a require-ment that backup intravenous lines be made readily available; and (4) a requirement that the warden be present in the execution chamber However, a defendant need not suffer actual physical injury or pain before a punishment will
be declared cruel and unusual In Trop v Dulles,
356 U.S 86, 78 S Ct 590, 2 L Ed 2d 630 (1958), the Supreme Court held that the use of denationalization (the deprivation of citizen-ship) as a punishment is barred by the Eighth Amendment The Court reasoned that when someone is denationalized, “[t]here may be involved no physical mistreatment, no primitive torture There is instead the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society It is
a form of punishment more primitive than torture, for it destroys for the individual the political existence that was centuries in the development.” The Court also opined that the Eighth Amendment must “draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” The Supreme Court has held that the death penalty itself is not inherently cruel but has described it as“an extreme sanction, suitable to the most extreme of crimes” (Gregg v Georgia,
428 U.S 153, 96 S Ct 2909, 49 L Ed 2d 859 [1976]) Federal and state courts have upheld
The “hitching post” at
Alabama’s Limestone
Correctional facility
was the subject of
former inmate Larry
Hope’s (not pictured)
lawsuit, Hope v.
Pelzer, alleging cruel
and unusual
punishment.
AP IMAGES
Trang 4modern methods of carrying out the death
penalty, such as shooting, hanging,
electrocu-tion, and lethal injecelectrocu-tion, as constitutional The
Court has held that statutes providing a
mandatory death sentence for certain degrees
or categories of MURDER are unconstitutional
because they preclude SENTENCING authorities
from considering aspects of a particular
defen-dant’s character or record or from considering
circumstances that might mitigate a particular
crime (see Lockett v Ohio, 438 U.S 586, 98 S
Ct 2954, 57 L Ed 2d 973 [1978]) In Ford v
Wainwright, 477 U.S 399, 106 S Ct 2595, 91 L
Ed 2d 335 (1986), the Court held that the
Eighth Amendment prohibits states from
inflicting the death penalty upon a prisoner
who is insane
Applying this test, the Court initially ruled
that the death penalty may be imposed upon
16-year-old U.S citizens who have been convicted
of murder, because a national consensus, as
reflected by state legislation, supported capital
punishment for juveniles of that age (Stanford v
Kentucky, 492 U.S 361, 109 S Ct 2969, 106 L
Ed 2d 306[1989]) Under the same reasoning,
the Court initially permitted the states to
execute a mentally retarded person who had
been convicted of murder, despite claims that
the defendant’s handicap minimized his moral
culpability (Penry v Lynaugh, 492 U.S 302, 109
S Ct 2934, 106 L Ed 2d 256[1989])
In the years after the Court decided Penry,
several states, including Texas, exempted
men-tally retarded individuals from their
death-penalty statutes Moreover, very few states that
permitted such executions actually executed
mentally retarded defendants, meaning those
individuals with IQs of lower than 70 In 2002,
the Court reviewed its holding in Penry in
Atkins v Virginia, 536 U.S 304, 122 S Ct 2242,
153 L Ed 2d 335 (2002) Because so few states
allowed execution of the mentally retarded, the
Court observed, the practice had indeed become
“unusual.” Moreover, justifications for the
death penalty, such as retribution against
the defendant and deterrence of capital crimes
by prospective offenders, did not apply to the
mentally retarded Accordingly, the Court
categorically excluded the mentally retarded
from execution under the Eighth Amendment
Atkins demonstrated that the Eighth
Amendment, like other constitutional
provi-sions, evolves as society evolves Nevertheless,
JusticeANTONIN SCALIA, in a scathing dissent in
Atkins, attacked the majority opinion as lacking in precedent He noted: “Seldom has
an opinion of this Court rested so obviously upon nothing but the personal views of its members.” According to Scalia, the ABOLITION
of executions of mildly mentally retarded individuals by 18 states did not amount to a
“national consensus” that such executions were so “morally repugnant as to violate our national ‘standards of decency.’” Moreover, Scalia noted that execution of mildly retarded individuals in 1791, when the Eighth Amend-ment was adopted, would not have been considered “cruel and unusual.” Rather, only the severely and profoundly retarded were historically protected
Three years later the Court applied the same logic in overturning Stanford v Kentucky, concluding that evolving standards of decency demonstrated that application of the death penalty to persons under 18 years of age constituted cruel and unusual punishment forbidden by the Eighth Amendment (Roper v
Simmons, 543 U.S 551, 125 S Ct 1183, 161 L
Ed 2d 1 [2005]) As in Atkins, the Court in Roper wrote: “the objective INDICIA of national consensus here—the rejection of the juvenile death penalty in the majority of states; the infrequency of its use even where it remains on the books; and the consistency in the trend toward abolition of the practice—provide suffi-cient evidence that society today views juveniles,
in the words Atkins used respecting the mentally retarded, as‘categorically lessCULPABLEthan the average criminal.’” The evidence of such consensus in Roper was similar to the evidence
in Atkins: Thirty states prohibited the juvenile death penalty, including 12 that rejected it altogether and 18 that maintained it but, by express provision or judicial interpretation, excluded juveniles from its reach Even in the
20 states without a formal prohibition, the Court observed, execution of juveniles was infrequent
With regard to the amount of punishment that may be inflicted, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment also bars pun-ishment that is clearly out of proportion to the offense committed The Supreme Court has considered the issue of proportionality, particu-larly in the context of the death penalty In Coker v Georgia, 433 U.S 584, 97 S Ct 2861,
53 L Ed 2d 982 (1977), the Court held that death was a disproportionate penalty for the
Trang 5crime of raping an adult woman Twenty-one years later the Court affirmed the Coker decision
in Kennedy v Louisiana, —U.S.—, 128 S Ct
2641, 171 L Ed 2d 525 (2008), a case in which the defendant was convicted for raping an eight-year-old girl The young age of the victim does not make death a constitutional punishment for
RAPE, the Court concluded, unless the victim died as a result of the crime or thePERPETRATOR
intended for the victim to die
In Solem v Helm, 463 U.S 277, 103 S Ct
3001, 77 L Ed 2d 637 (1983), the Court applied its proportionality analysis to FELONY prison sentences In Solem, the defendant had passed a bad check in the amount of $100 Although this crime ordinarily would be punishable by a maximum five-year sentence, the defendant had been sentenced to life imprisonment without
PAROLE because of six prior felony convictions The Court held that the sentence was signifi-cantly disproportionate to the defendant’s crime and that it was thus prohibited by the Eighth Amendment
The U.S Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit applied the proportionality analysis in overturning the life sentence of a defendant who had been convicted under California’s three-strikes law, which requires that courts impose harsh sentences upon defendants who have been convicted of three felonies Cal Penal Code Section 667 In Brown v Mayle, 283 F.3d
1019 (9th Cir 2002), the defendants were charged with MISDEMEANOR petty theft for stealing three videotapes and a steering wheel alarm, together worth less than $400.00 However, because both defendants had two
Is Death by Electrocution Cruel and Unusual under Evolving
Standards?
Convicted killer Kenneth Spivey’s
attorneys argued that Spivey’s
impending death in Georgia’s electric
chair constituted cruel and unusual
punishment under theEIGHTH AMENDMENT
and the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT to the
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES In a
March 2001 opinion that initially stayed s
punishment, Justice Leah J Sears wrote,
“Electrocution offends the evolving
stan-dards of decency that characterize a
mature, civilized society” (Spivey v State
of Georgia, 544 S.E 2d 136 [Ga 2001])
Georgia’s attorney general and a county
prosecutor asked the court for
reconsid-eration In October of the same year, the
Georgia Supreme Court outlawed
elec-trocution as a means of execution in the
state because it was deemed cruel and
unusual punishment under the state
constitution and because of the
implica-tions of the state’s year 2000 revised
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT statute (Dawson v
State of Georgia, 554 S.E 2d 137 [Ga
2001]) The 4–3 ruling gave momentum
to the movement against death by
electrocution, which culminated in its
ABOLITION in 2008, when the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment
In early May 2001, several radio stations, including WYNC in New York, aired audiotapes of electrocutions in Georgia’s prisons spanning a period from
1983 to 1998 The recordings were made
by state officials to protect themselves from litigation over the manner in which they followed policies to ensure smooth executions The tapes were void of emotion and merely recorded the voices
of the executing officials during the process There were no shouts or cries
of pain, but several tapes contained the final words of the inmates The tapes might support the argument that elec-trocution, when properly conducted, is
as humane as other alternatives
Dr Chris Sparry, Georgia’s chief
MEDICAL EXAMINER, who has testified on the matter, stated:
The BEST EVIDENCE that exists to indicate that people who are judicially executed never feel
any conscious pain or suffering rests in the tens of thousands of people who have sustained acci-dent electrocutions and have survived None of those people can even remember the event if the current goes through their head… consciousness is obliter-ated instantly when the current
is passed through the body because the amount of the current is so very, very great
Georgia was one of four states still employing the use of electric chairs for execution of condemned criminals, although both Georgia and Florida changed their primary means of execu-tion to lethal injecexecu-tion for the newly convicted starting in 2000 In 2002 Alabama enacted a law that gave inmates the choice of lethal injection
or electrocution In 2008 the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that electrocution was cruel and unusual punishment The state legislature enacted a law making death by lethal injection the means of execution
Trang 6prior felony convictions involving violent
crimes, the misdemeanor petty theft charges
were enhanced and prosecuted as felonies
The Ninth Circuit ruled that the defendants’
sentences constituted cruel and unusual
pun-ishment, for the trial court was effectively
imposing life sentences for what the legislature
classified as a misdemeanor under any other
circumstances
The U.S Supreme Court grantedCERTIORARI,
reversed, and remanded the case with instructions
for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its decision in
light of Lockyer v Andrade, 538 U.S 63, 123 S Ct
1166, 155 L Ed 144 (2003), where the Court ruled
that the Eighth Amendment’s proportionality
principle was not violated by the imposition of
two 25-years-to-life sentences under the
Califor-nia three-strikes law, on a conviction of two counts
of petty theft with a prior conviction The defendant in Andrade had been convicted of stealing videotapes worth $153.54
The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment may also forbid penal sanctions of any kind in certain situations For example, in Robinson v California, 370 U.S 660, 82 S Ct
1417, 8 L Ed 2d 758 (1962), the Court ruled that punishment may not be inflicted simply because
a person is in a certain condition or has a particular illness Robinson concerned a Califor-nia statute (Cal Health & Safety Code § 11721 [West]) that criminalized addiction to narcotics, rather than the possession, use, or sale of them
The Court, in striking down the statute, stated:
We hold that a state law which imprisons a person thus afflicted as a criminal, even though he has never touched any narcotic
In many states, condemned persons
are given the opportunity to elect the
method by which they will die Some
Americans bristle at the thought that
“humane consideration” should be given
to those who have wreaked heinous
inhumanity upon others There remains
some who believe that execution should
hurt, not only because it may serve to
deter future wrongdoers but also because
of the belief that death is intended as a
punishment, not an escape
As of 2009, all 35 states with death
penalty laws employed lethal injection as
the preferred method With lethal
injec-tion, the victim is first put to sleep with
sodium pentothal, after which other
drugs are administered to paralyze the
body and stop the heart The person
never regains consciousness
The U.S Supreme Court has
pro-vided guidance as to what should
constitute cruel and unusual
punish-ment under the Eighth Amendpunish-ment,
but made it clear that the standards
must be evolving and dynamic
“Diffi-culty would attend the effort to define
with exactness the extent of the
consti-tutional provision which provides that
cruel and unusual punishments shall
not be inflicted; but it is safe to affirm
that punishments of torture [such as
drawing and quartering, emboweling alive, beheading, public dissecting, and burning alive], and all others in the same line of unnecessary cruelty, are forbidden by that amendment to the Constitution,” the Court said, more than 100 years ago, in Wilkerson v
Utah (99 U.S 130, 25 L Ed 345 [1878]), which upheld an execution by firing squad Twelve years later, in In re Kemmler (136 U.S 436, 10 S Ct 930,
34 L Ed 519[1890]), the Court, under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due pro-cess clause, found electrocution to be
a permissible method of execution
Moreover, in assuming the applicability
of the Eighth Amendment to the States, the Court, many years later, held that a second electrocution, resulting from the failure of the first one, did not violate the proscription “The cruelty against which the Constitution protects a convicted man is cruelty inherent in the method of punishment, not the necessary suffering involved in any method employed to extinguish life humanely,” the majority opinion stated (Louisiana ex rel Francis v Resweber,
329 U.S 459, 67 S Ct 374, 916 L Ed
422[1947])
In Trop v Dulles (356 U.S 86, 78 S
Ct 590, 2 L Ed 2d 630 [1958]), the Supreme Court, in referring to the
United States as“an enlightened democ-racy,” held that “The [Eighth] Amend-ment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” That language was repeated again in Gregg v Georgia (428 U.S 153, 96 S Ct 2909, 49
L Ed 2d 859[1978]), wherein the Court noted that the Eighth Amendment was to
be interpreted“in a flexible and dynamic manner to accord with evolving stan-dards of decency.” Most likely, this is the language from which the Georgia Su-preme Court formed their ultimate Spivey ruling
FURTHER READINGS Macready, Dawn 2000 “The ‘Shocking’ Truth about the Electric Chair: An Analysis of the Unconstitutionality of Electrocution ” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer).
Roy, Patricia 2002 “Not So Shocking: The Death of the Electric Chair in Georgia at the Hands of the Georgia Supreme Court ” Mercer Law Review 53 (summer) Weinstein, Bob, and Jim Bessant 1996 Death Row Confidential New York: HarperPa-perbacks.
CROSS REFERENCES Capital Punishment; Eighth Amendment; Fourteenth Amendment.
Trang 7drug within the State or been guilty of any irregular behavior there, inflicts a cruel and unusual punishment.… To be sure, impris-onment for ninety days [the sentence im-posed in this case] is not, in the abstract, a punishment which is either cruel or unusual
But the question cannot be considered in the abstract Even one day in prison would be a cruel and unusual punishment for the
“crime” of having a common cold
The so-called WAR ON TERRORISM led by the Bush administration added a new wrinkle to the evolving jurisprudence under the cruel and unusual punishment clause In a potentially groundbreaking case, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether the cruel and unusual punishment clause applies to persons who are not U.S citizens but who are detained by the U.S military on foreign soil (Rasul v Myers,
—U.S.—, 129 S Ct 763, 172 L Ed 2d 753 [2008]) Four British citizens, former detainees
at the U.S Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, brought an action against then-secretary
of defense Donald Rumsfeld and commanding officers at the detainment facility to recover compensation for the torture the detainees allegedly endured while imprisoned there
The U.S district court for the District of Columbia dismissed the action Rasul v Rums-feld, 414 F.Supp.2d 26 (2006) The U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed It held: (1) the plaintiffs had no constitutional rights because they were not U.S
citizens and had no property or presence in the United States; and (2) even if such rights theoretically existed, the doctrine of qualified
IMMUNITY would operate to protect the individ-ual defendants from liability because such rights were not clearly established at the time of the alleged events, and thus no reasonable govern-ment official would have known that these detainees were protected by the constitution (Rasul v Myers,, 512 F.3d 644 [2008])
Without opinion, the Supreme Court granted certiorari and then summarily vacated the judgment of the court of appeals The Court also remanded the case for reconsideration in light of Boumediene v Bush, —U.S.—, 128 S
Ct 2229, 171 L Ed 2d 41 (2008), which held that the U.S Constitution grants Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to seek HABEAS CORPUS
relief in U.S courts Upon REMAND to the D.C
circuit, however, the court of appeals in Rasul affirmed its earlier holding It ruled that the
former detainees at Guantanamo Bay did not have clearly established rights under the due process clause or cruel and unusual punishment clause Thus, Rumsfeld and the other federal officials named in the complaint were entitled
to qualified immunity from liability for alleged violations of the detainees’ rights Rasul v Myers,—F.3d—-, 2009 WL 1098707 (2009) The court’s ruling had not been appealed as of summer 2009
FURTHER READINGS Denno, Deborah W 2000 “Adieu to Electrocution.” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer): 665–88 Erickson, Patricia E., and Steven K Erickson 2008 Crime, Punishment, and Mental Illness: Law and the Behavioral Sciences in Conflict Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.
Harding, Roberta M 1994 “‘Endgame’: Competency and the Execution of Condemned Inmates—A Proposal to Satisfy the Eighth Amendment’s Prohibition against the Infliction of Cruel and Unusual Punishment ” St Louis University Public Law Review 14.
LaFave, Wayne R., and Austin W Scott Jr 1986 Substantive Criminal Law St Paul, Minn.: West.
Macready, Dawn 2000 “The ‘Shocking’ Truth about the Electric Chair: An Analysis of the Unconstitutionality of Electrocution ” Ohio Northern University Law Review 26 (summer): 781 –800.
Nelson, Diane A 1993 “Hudson v McMillian: The Evolving Standard of Eighth Amendment Application to the Use
of Excessive Force against Prison Inmates ” North Carolina Law Review 71 (June).
CROSS REFERENCES Capital Punishment; Determinate Sentence; Eighth Amend-ment; Juvenile Law; Sentencing.
CRUELTY The deliberate and malicious infliction of mental
or physical pain upon persons or animals
As applied to people, cruelty encompasses abusive, outrageous, and inhumane treatment that results in the wanton and unnecessary infliction of suffering upon the body or mind Legal cruelty involves conduct that warrants the granting of aDIVORCEto the injured spouse Phrases such as“cruel and inhuman treatment,”
“cruel and abusive treatment,” or “cruel and barbarous treatment” are commonly employed
in matrimonial law The term comprehends mental and physical harm, but a single act of cruelty is usually insufficient for divorce; a pattern of cruel conduct must occur over a period of time This ground of divorce is of diminished significance due to the enactment of no-fault legislation by most jurisdictions
Trang 8Cruelty to children, also known as CHILD
ABUSE, encompasses mental and physical
batter-ing and abuse, as defined by statutes in a
majority of jurisdictions
Cruelty to animals involves the infliction of
physical pain or death upon an animal, when
unnecessary for disciplinary, instructional, or
humanitarian purposes, such as the release of
the animal from incurable illness A person
commits aMISDEMEANORif he or she
intentional-ly or recklessintentional-ly neglects any animal in his or her
custody, mistreats any animal, or kills or injures
any animal without legal privilege or the
consent of its owner
CROSS REFERENCE
Animal Rights.
CTA
An abbreviation for cum testamento annexo,
Latin for “with the will attached.”
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was a dangerous
moment in the COLD WAR between the United
States and the Soviet Union The actions taken
by President John F Kennedy’s administration
prevented the installation of Soviet nuclear
missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles from Florida
The crisis also illustrated the limitations of
INTERNATIONAL LAW, as the United States relied on
military actions and threats to accomplish
its goal
The crisis grew out of political changes in
Cuba In the 1950s Fidel Castro, a young lawyer,
led a guerrilla movement against Cuban dictator
Fulgencio Batista Batista lost the confidence of
the Cuban people and on January 1, 1959, fled
the country Castro became premier of the new
government
At first, the United States supported the
Castro government This changed when Castro
seized U.S.-owned sugar estates and cattle
ranches in Cuba The United States
subse-quently embargoed trade with Cuba, and the
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY(CIA) began covert
operations to topple Castro In 1960 Castro
openly embracedCOMMUNISMand signed Cuba’s
first trade agreement with the Soviet Union
Many Cubans had left the island of Cuba
for the United States following the Castro
revolution Aided by the United States, a
Cuban exile army was trained for an invasion
Although most of the planning took place in
1960, when President DWIGHT D EISENHOWER
was finishing his second term, the final decision to invade came during the first months of the Kennedy administration In April 1961 Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs The invasion was a debacle, in part because U.S air support that had been promised was not provided The exile army was captured
Convinced that the United States would attempt another invasion, Castro asked Premier Nikita Khrushchev, of the Soviet Union, for nuclear missiles Khrushchev agreed to what would be the first deployment of NUCLEAR WEAPONS outside the Soviet Union President Kennedy at first did not believe the Soviets would follow through on their promise On October 14, 1962, however, photographs taken
by reconnaissance planes showed that missile sites were being built in Cuba The president convened a small group of trusted advisers, called the Executive Committee of theNATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL (Ex Com) Attorney General
ROBERT F KENNEDY served on Ex Com and became the key adviser to President Kennedy during the crisis
Military officials advocated bombing the missile sites or invading Cuba Others argued for a nuclear strike on Cuba These ideas were rejected in favor of a naval blockade of Cuba
All ships attempting to enter Cuba were to be
U.S Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (seated, far right) addresses members of the U.N Security Council on October
25, 1962 On display are aerial
photographs of missile sites in Cuba—proof that the Soviet Union had indeed been building missile sites
on the island.
AP IMAGES
Trang 9stopped and searched for missiles and related military material President Kennedy, believing that the Soviets were using the missiles to test his will, resolved to make the crisis public
Bypassing private, diplomatic procedures, Ken-nedy went on national television on October 22 and informed the United States of the missile sites, the naval blockade, and his resolve to take any action necessary to prevent the missile deployment
Tension built during the last days of October as the world awaited the approach of Soviet missile-bearing ships at the blockade line
If Soviet ships refused to turn back, it was likely that U.S ships would either stop them or sink them If that happened, nuclear war seemed probable
During the crisis, the UNITED NATIONS was not used as a vehicle for negotiation or mediation The United States and the Soviet Union ignored an appeal by Secretary General
U Thant, of the United Nations, that they reduce tensions for a few weeks Instead, the Security Council of the United Nations became
a stage for both sides to trade accusations
Ambassador ADLAI STEVENSON, from the United States, presented photographs of the missile sites to back up U.S claims
On October 24 the crisis began to ease, as
12 Soviet ships on their way to Cuba were, on orders from Moscow, diverted or halted
However, construction on the missile sites continued On October 26, Premier Khrushchev sent a long, emotional letter to President Kennedy, claiming that the missiles were defensive He implied that a pledge by the United States not to invade Cuba would allow him to remove the missiles President Kennedy replied, accepting the proposal to exchange withdrawal of the missiles for the promise not
to invade He also stated that if the Soviet Union did not answer his reply in two or three days, Cuba would be bombed On October 28 the Soviets announced on Radio Moscow that the missile sites were being dismantled
Some historians maintain that President Kennedy acted heroically to meet a threat to the security of the United States Others claim that the missiles at issue were of limited range and were purely defensive, and that Kennedy was reckless in brandishing the threat of nuclear war Most agree that the crisis was probably the
closest the Soviet Union and the United States ever got to nuclear war
The significance of the crisis to international law and the management of international crises has led to many books, articles, and scholarly conferences In October 2002 a conference hosted by Fidel Castro was held in Havana It was a rare event because participants from the United States, Soviet, and Cuban governments attended the gathering, sharing their impres-sions of what had happened during the crisis Participants included former U.S defense secretary Robert McNamara, Kennedy presi-dential aides Arthur Schlesinger, Ted Sorensen, and Richard Goodwin, as well as Ethel Kennedy, the widow ofROBERT KENNEDY The Cuban government declassified docu-ments relating to the crisis and Castro took center stage, arguing that Khrushchev had inflamed the situation by lying to Kennedy that there were no nuclear weapons in Cuba McNamara confirmed that most of Kennedy’s advisers, both military and civilian, had recom-mended he attack Cuba The conference ended with a trip to a former missile silo on the western side of Cuba
FURTHER READINGS Acosta, Tomás Diez 2002 October 1962: The “Missile” Crisis
as Seen from Cuba New York: Pathfinder.
Blight, James G., Bruce J Allyn, and David A Welch 2002 Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Garthoff, Raymond 2002 “The Havana Conference on the Cuban Missile Crisis ” Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
O ’Neill, William L 2005 Coming Apart: An Informal History
of America in the 1960s Chicago: Dee.
CROSS REFERENCE Embargo.
CULPA [Latin, Fault, blame, or neglect.] A civil law term that implies that certain conduct is actionable The word culpa is applied to acts of commission and omission in both tort and contract cases It implies the failure to perform
a legally imposed duty, orNEGLIGENCE Lata culpa means gross or wanton fault, or neglect Levis culpa is common or ordinary negligence, or the absence of reasonable care Levissima culpa is slight neglect or fault
Trang 10Blameworthy; involving the commission of a fault
or the breach of a duty imposed by law
Culpability generally implies that an act
performed is wrong but does not involve any
evil intent by the wrongdoer The connotation
of the term is fault rather than malice or a guilty
purpose It has limited significance inCRIMINAL
LAW except in cases of reckless HOMICIDE in
which a person acts negligently or demonstrates
a reckless disregard for life, which results in
another person’s death In general, however,
culpability has milder connotations It is used to
mean reprehensible rather than wantonly or
grossly negligent behavior Culpable conduct
may be wrong but it is not necessarily criminal
Culpable ignorance is the lack of knowledge
or understanding that results from the omission
of ordinary care to acquire such knowledge or
understanding
CULPRIT
An individual who has been formally charged with
a criminal offense but who has not yet been tried
and convicted
Culprit is a colloquial rather than a legal
term and is commonly applied to someone who
is guilty of a minor degree of moral
reprehensi-bility According toSIR WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, the
term is most likely a derivative of the archaic
mode of ARRAIGNMENT during which upon a
prisoner’sPLEAof not guilty the cleric would say
culpabilis prit, meaning “he is guilty and the
crown is ready.” The more common derivation
is from culpa, meaning“fault or blame.”
CUM TESTAMENTO ANNEXO
[Latin, With the will annexed.] A phrase that
describes an administrator named by a probate or
surrogate court to settle and distribute an estate
according to the terms of a will in which the
testator, its maker, has failed to name an executor,
or in which the one named refuses to act or is
legally incapable of acting
The term is often applied to the
administra-tion conducted by such a person
vCUMMINGS, HOMER STILLE
Homer Stille Cummings was the 55th attorney
general of the United States, serving from 1933
to 1939 in the administration of President
FRANKLIN D.ROOSEVELT Cummings was a DEMO-CRATIC PARTY leader and an advocate for reform
of prisons in the United States He was instrumental in establishing the Alcatraz Island Prison, which was envisioned as a model for housing maximum security-level inmates in the federal prison system
Cummings was born in Chicago, Illinois, on April 30, 1870 He attended Yale University where he received his undergraduate degree in
1891 and two years later, his law degree
Cummings was admitted to the Connecticut bar in 1893 and began a private practice in Stamford He rose in prominence as a litigator, becoming a member of the New York bar He also was admitted to practice before a number
of federal district courts and the U.S Supreme Court
Cummings became involved with the Dem-ocratic Party and was elected mayor of Stamford for three terms He also served, from 1908 to
1912, as the city’s corporation counsel In 1902 Cummings ran for a seat as congressman at large from Connecticut and lost; he also ran unsuccessfully for a U.S Senate seat in 1916
Cummings’s entry on the national scene began when he served seven terms as a delegate at large to the Democratic National Convention
From 1919 to 1920, he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee
Beginning in 1914, Cummings served for a decade as the state’s attorney for Fairfield County, Connecticut His interest in the topic
of prison reform paid off in 1930 when he was appointed chairman of Connecticut’s Commit-tee on State Prison Conditions Cummings’s long years of labor on behalf of the Democratic Party and his work on the successful 1932 presidential campaign of Franklin D Roosevelt were rewarded In 1933 President Roosevelt appointed Senator Thomas J Walsh of Mon-tana to be his attorney general, but Walsh died suddenly of a heart attack on a train trip to Washington, D.C., to attend the presidential inauguration Roosevelt then appointed Cum-mings as U.S attorney general CumCum-mings turned out to be the first of four attorneys general appointed by Roosevelt, the nation’s longest-serving president
The 63-year-old Cummings’s interest in and experience concerning prison reform proved to
be significant in his work as attorney general
Cummings proposed and oversaw improvements