Case Analysis : Richard Diaz And Charles Logan

The famous Founding Fathers of the United States created critical documents to protect the citizens of the country they were establishing. These documents included the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. The latter, the Bill of Rights, ensures certain rights to all citizens, and the Eighth Amendment in particular, protects citizens against cruel or unusual punishments for breaking the law. When analyzing the protection under the Eighth Amendment one must also look at all the aspects of the law including: the history of the law, the modern uses and abuses of the law, and the law’s current effectiveness.

Whenever an inmate gets incarcerated or is found guilty for a conviction, many of their rights go away except for a select few. The few rights that prisoners get to keep are, but are not limited to, visitation rights, mail services, religious gatherings and studies, medical treatment and care, and access to courts and legal assistance. These services help inmates stay in touch with society and help inmates get treated fairly throughout the facility (Santillan, 2010). In 1969, there were approximately 300,000 people incarcerated in federal, state, and county jails or prisons. Today that number surpasses 2.4 million and to add to it, there are approximately 4 million under parole or probation (People’s Law Office).

The prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment largely concerns itself with disproportionate and arbitrary punishments imposed by the government. “The Court has repeatedly emphasized the Eighth Amendment’s expansive and vital character and its capacity for evolutionary growth.” (Kanovitz, 2010) Cruelty is interpreted as actions that oppose current standards of decency. As public opinion grows and changes these standards are apt to change. The vague wording of the Eighth Amendment allows room for the opinion of what punishments are acceptable to adapt to modern times.

The most valued documents in modern American society tend also to be the most heavily debated. For instance, interpretations of the United States Constitution tend to be rooted in one of two firmly entrenched beliefs;while the first camp believes it to be set in stone, the second his convinced that the United States Constitution is by nature a perpetually evolving document, meant to reflect the desires and needs of the people. Even amongst those in the same camp, disagreements abound; those believing that the Constitution is set in stone are divided on issues such as the eighth amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishment’. It is difficult to reach a consensus on what, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. For example, the concept of waterboarding is championed by many as a ‘humane’ form of torture which causes no physical harm. However, it was deemed a cruel and unusual punishment due to the sensations of drowning and symptoms of mental illness which it produced in its victims. It can therefore be inferred that physical injury is not the only factor to be considered in whether or not a practice is to be deemed inhumane; factors such as mental wellbeing and fitness of punishment must also be considered. This leads one to ponder how the concept of solitary confinement could possibly even be considered when it so clearly violates the protections which the eighth amendment provides.

His focus on the eighth amendment and cruel and unusual punishment looked back on the many years of unfair sentencing that negroes have faced in America. By looking through a historical lense at the issues faced by negroes both at the time of the conviction and additionally throughout history, Douglas considers a “strong statistically significant difference in the proportions of blacks sentenced to death, compared to whites, when a variety of nonracial aggravating circumstances are considered…” In the case of the eighth amendment the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause is very vague, therefore leaving room for interpretation with what can be determined as “cruel” and “unusual”. Douglas regards this sense of ambiguity but uses it to enforce his point as previous cases often failed to directly regard the sense of racism that may have led to unfair convictions for negro

The Petitioners, officials of the State of North Carolina, are askeding for the decision of that case to be overruled. They argued that “if inmate communications on legal problems are not restricted, there is no further obligation to expend state funds to implement affirmatively the right of access.” The Supreme Court granted certiorari.

“I never realized that once I was labeled as a criminal, I had forfeited my right to be considered a victim,” says Elizabeth Reid at the end of an article she wrote describing her horrific experience as a resident at one of Washington Department of Corrections Work Release facilities (Reid 2013). Elizabeth was led to a secluded room of the facility where she was raped by one of the staff/ guards. She was forced to face the wall as he forcibly raped her. At first she did not report the rape because she feared that he would cause her to be sent back to prison. However, instead of telling someone inside the facility, she went to the local police to report the rape. To her amazement, the cops did not follow through because they were informed that she was on a form of supervised release. As a result, Elizabeth’s rapist was never charged or apprehended for her rape. Sexual misconduct between female inmates and male correctional officers (CO) has been a problem that

Under the eighth amendment, cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden, however, that law stopped absolutely nothing. Inside the walls of the Eastern State Penitentiary, every action had a consequence. In the winter, if inmates were to misbehave they would get chained to the wall and have buckets of cold water thrown on them. In the summer they would get chained to a chair for days. It is bad enough most of the people in Eastern State were in solitary confinement, let alone getting strapped to a chair for days. If they continued to misbehave, an iron gag was placed over the mouth of the prisoner (Griest). The prisoners at Eastern State Penitentiary were clearly subject to cruel and unusual punishment. By the time Eastern State closed its doors in 1971, it was widely seen as a failure.

Inmates held in the United State’s prison system face critical exposure to numerous violations of their basic human rights. Abuses of power present themselves in a myriad of ways, including; the unregulated approach in which prison facilities enforce solitary confinement, the misuse of “compassionate release” policies and the judicial system’s wrongful imprisonment of individuals suffering from mental illness and, or mental disability. In most cases, prisoners will experience at least one, if not all, of these disparaging interactions during incarceration. Without federal regulations demanding system accountability, the unjust applications of physical violence, non-lethal weaponry and and needless use of excessive force will continue to take place.

Summarize- This source is an audio recording from what appears to be a news service. The audio discusses the issue of prisoners in Texas jail suing the state for not having air condition in the celling on extremely hot Texas summer days. The audio tape gives some feedback from the prisoners of the Texas prison, a retired warden of the prison, and the reporter, John Burnett. The inmate and some of the prison guards claim that it breaks the United States eighth amendment for cruel and unusual punishment. However, the previous warden of twenty years uses past experiences to urge that the prisoners do not need air conditioning. The prisoners do a great job giving personal experience with battling the heat to add sympathy to their story.

Many women who are raped by the correction officers often would not speak up because they were told that if they were to say anything, their lives would end up being worse than before. Other women were offered goods such as cigarettes and other essential needs in exchange for having sex with the corrections officers. In the text it states, “Several female inmates told the grand jury that the guards offered them cigarettes, commissary goods and additional time on the phone in exchange for sex”(Hagg, 2018, p. 2). The sexual act would occur in closets and sometimes even in inmates’ cells. Additionally, the guards and corrections officers had a system that prevents them from being caught by the supervisor. “At least one guard… devised a system with other officers to alert one another if they were about to be caught, officials said. If the sexual acts inside the jail cell needed to be cut short, the court documents said, guards inside a jail monitoring room would remotely

In 2004, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) conducted a survey of inmates in state and federal correction facilities examining the medical problems and other conditions by gender age and background characteristics (Maruschak, 2008). Correctional agencies are required to provide constitutionally mandated treatment for prisoners that have medical problems (Cropsey, Wexler, Melnick, Taxman, & Young, 2007, p. 6). In 1976, the United States Supreme Court mandated an inmate’s right to medical care in Estelle v. Gamble (1976). The cost of medical treatment for inmates is a large expense for correction agencies. According to Lamb-Mechanick and Nelson (2000), medical costs for inmates account for approximately 11% of the average correctional

The inappropriate relationships between correctional officers and offenders has garnered a lot of attention as of late. As when news media focuses and depicts some police officers negatively, correctional officers are apt to face similar treatment from the press when a mistake is made. Recently, what gains attention, and is the most apt to be sensationalized, are inappropriate relationships with offenders especially of a sexual nature. Nevertheless, sensationalized or not, at times some of the attention is arguably well deserved. In 2013, CBS and many other news outlets and media reported on four female correctional officers that were impregnated by the same inmate. The resulting investigation opened a Hoover Dam of compromised officers.

e played a key role in the controversial bailout of American International Group Inc. He is central to how Dodd-Frank is put into practice. Most everything of significance at the Federal Reserve Board goes across his desk.

This paper presents a case analysis of Richard Ramirez, the serial killer of the 1980s better known as “The Night Stalker”. Using the qualitative method and content analysis, the findings reveal that the law enforcement procedures were minimal because of the technology available during that time and the prosecution was sufficient because of the criminal justice system.